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USAID celebrates 50 years of saving lives across the globe

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Wendy Stone/PATH

Today, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) celebrates 50 years of leadership and expertise in addressing development challenges to improve lives across the globe.

November 2, 2011 by Kaitlin Christenson

Today, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) celebrates 50 years of leadership and expertise in addressing development challenges to improve lives across the globe. Since it launched, USAID has had a rich history of supporting global health, including research and development (R&D). Some of the major breakthroughs in global health that USAID has supported include:

  • Oral rehydration therapy (ORT). ORT, a treatment for diarrhea, is credited with saving tens of millions of children’s lives. USAID began supporting this effort in the 1960s. In 1979, USAID made the largest donor investment in the establishment of the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, where scientists continue to conduct important R&D to improve ORT.
  • Eradicating smallpox. In 1966, USAID joined the global effort to eradicate smallpox, a contagious disease that killed more than 300 million people in the 20th century. In the same decade that USAID began to fight the disease, 10 million to 15 million people contracted the disease a year, and more than 2 million people died from it. Through investing in research that adapted the mechanics of US military jet injectors for application of the smallpox vaccine, USAID played a critical role in achieving global eradication of the disease.
  • Funding research for tools to help women. USAID funded research to develop the Uniject™ injection system, a tool that delivers the drug oxytocin to help reduce excessive bleeding during the third stage of childbirth. More recently, USAID has ramped up efforts to combat HIV by funding research for microbicide gels, a tool that has the potential to help women protect themselves from the virus. Through investing in a groundbreaking trial held at the Centre for the AIDS Programme Research in South Africa (CAPRISA), USAID played a critical role in supporting the first proof-of-concept trial that showed a microbicide can protect women against HIV and herpes.
USAID has helped save lives across the world through its strong support for global health R&D Photo: Wendy Stone/PATH

USAID’s commitment to global health R&D remains strong today. In fact, USAID is a vital partner to many GHTC members. USAID and the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) have been in a cooperative agreement since 2006 to accelerate the discovery of an AIDS vaccine. USAID also supports the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development (TB Alliance) in its effort to develop better drugs to treat tuberculosis (TB). The agency also contributed significant funding to the Meningitis Vaccine Project (MVP)—a partnership between PATH and the World Health Organization—for its efforts to discover and deliver a new meningitis vaccine. USAID supported a comprehensive analysis of the economic costs of meningitis epidemics, aided efforts to improve meningitis surveillance, and helped to address regulatory issues.

With this strong commitment from USAID, the future of global health R&D will undoubtedly hold many breakthroughs that have the potential to save millions of lives worldwide.

Categories: USAID

About the author

Kaitlin ChristensonGHTC

Kaitlin Christenson is director of GHTC.

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Research Roundup: First-of-its-kind mpox vaccine trial, New treatment-resistant malaria drug, Genetically modified mosquitos

Written by Hannah Sachs-Wetstone / GHTC
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Research Roundup: Noninvasive malaria test, Mpox vaccine trial for kids, Novel class of antimicrobial agents

Written by Hannah Sachs-Wetstone / GHTC
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Interested in more global health innovation news? Every week GHTC scours media reports worldwide to deliver essential global health R&D news and content to your inbox. Sign up now to receive our weekly R&D News Roundup email. Recently published research found that a new, noninvasive test for malaria could provide a more reliable, safer, quicker, and more sensitive diagnostic option in low- and middle-income countries. The Cytophone, a tabletop printer-sized device, uses targeted lasers and ultrasound to detect malaria-infected cells in the bloodstream via a small, noninvasive probe placed on the back of a person’s hand. Malaria-infected red blood cells accumulate a by-product with unique properties that can be distinguished from normal red blood cells when they pass through a laser. The test, which provides results within minutes, was found to be as good or better at detecting symptomatic Plasmodium falciparum malaria infections than the current gold standard point-of-care methods for malaria testing, which require blood samples and special laboratory equipment. The next phase of testing the device will also investigate whether the device can detect and distinguish between other species.Last Tuesday, Bavarian Nordic announced the start of a clinical study of the MVA-BN® mpox/smallpox vaccine in children between 2 and 11 years old, who are highly vulnerable to infection during the ongoing mpox emergency. The study, which currently has sites in the Democratic Republic of Congo and plans to include sites in Uganda as well, is investigating the safety and immunogenicity of the vaccine in children compared to adults. Last month, the World Health Organization prequalified the vaccine for adolescents between 12 and 17 years old, following the European Medicines Agency’s approval for this age group. Results from the new trial could support an extension of the current approval.Researchers have identified a novel class of antimicrobial agents known as encrypted peptides that play a key role in the immune system’s response to bacterial infections, opening up new possibilities for combating drug-resistant infections as antimicrobial resistance continues to grow as a global health threat. The immune system is traditionally thought to rely primarily on proteins explicitly linked to immune functions, but this new research reveals that other structural proteins contribute to antimicrobial defenses. Leveraging the immune system’s natural defenses through these non-immune proteins could allow researchers to develop effective antibiotic therapies less prone to resistance.