Oct 28 2011
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and China's Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) on Wednesday signed a Memorandum of Understanding to form a partnership to support new research and development (R&D) and production of new products for global health and agriculture, Agence France-Presse reports (10/26).
"Human and animal vaccines, diagnostics for TB (tuberculosis) and other diseases, hardier varieties of rice and other crops, and more productive livestock are among the innovations likely to be considered first," according to a statement from the Gates Foundation (10/26). MOST Vice Minister Zhang Laiwu said this was the first partnership the ministry has formed with a foreign non-governmental organization, Xinhua/China Daily notes (Shan, 10/27).
This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente. |