The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has helped save millions of lives among the world’s poor. Through their work, they are helping to find a way to stop the spread of global health diseases such as polio and malaria and support initiatives for proper sanitation.

Recently, there has been a great deal of success with projects like these in India. The country has been certified polio-free for over a year. To meet the requirements, the country had to go four years without a case of wild poliovirus. “This is a giant achievement in the global effort to eradicate polio,” according to an article on the Gates Foundation blog called Impatient Optimists. “As recently as 2009, India was home to nearly half the world’s cases and considered the hardest place on earth to stop the disease.”

To stay polio-free, India must maintain its high levels of immunity. In partnership with the government, the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF conduct two nationwide, as well as three sub-national, vaccination campaigns annually.

Where malaria is concerned, India is also making progress; having halved the number of its cases from two million in 2000 to 882,000 in 2013, according to WHO. The country is working towards the eradication of malaria through powerful campaign tactics and ensuring that rapid response diagnostic tests are available and easily accessible.

India is hoping to reach a pre-elimination phase of malaria in 2017 and to then move forward to total elimination by 2030.

In addition to eradicating these infectious diseases, efforts are being made to improve sanitation conditions to reduce illness and death. For example, in some parts of the country as many as 80 percent of the population do not own a toilet, which can be expensive to purchase and install. However open defecation can lead to diarrheal disease. More than 450,000 children died from the disease in 2014. Women and girls are also put in danger of being raped when they go off to find a private place to use the restroom.

Thanks to microfinance loans through the Centre for Development Orientation and Training (CDOT), families are able to purchase a toilet and improve their living conditions.

Through organizations like WHO, UNICEF, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, incredible feats for global health are being reached in India and all around the world.

– Drusilla Gibbs

Sources: Impatient Optimists 1, Impatient Optimists 2, Impatient Optimists 3, WHO
Photo: hydratelife