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Home > About NIH > Director's Page |
Grand Challenges in Global Health Media Briefing |
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Dr. Elias A. Zerhouni's comments Thank you, Dr. Ganguly. As Director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, and also a member and participant to the Grand Challenges scientific board and executive committee, I’m really pleased to be part of not only this ambitious undertaking, but also its initial selection of the 43 projects that you will hear about. First of all, I think it’s important to note that the researchers involved in these 42 projects really come from backgrounds that would not have been attracted to this field, were it not for this funding source. I think you can see from the investigators that have applied that we’ve attracted a great new talent, and also redirected known talented scientists, such as Dr. Baltimore, Dr. Axel, to problems that may not have been directed to or focused on without this initiative. The other characteristic from my standpoint that is remarkable is that these projects are truly on the cutting edge of science, and many of them are taking very important risks that others have shied away from. In addition to that, I think you can note that some of these projects are extremely focused, with very clear deliverable milestones. In areas of technology developments, they are of immediate relevance to the issue of global health. I can also note that some apply recently evolved technologies for the first time to problems of global health, while others will develop entirely new technologies. So you have a real spectrum of risk there. In some cases these projects will pursue research opportunities that have existed for years, but just didn’t have sufficient funding or focus to be enabled. It’s clear and I think we need to say that, that the level of risk taken by the project selected by the scientific board imply that some of these projects may not bear fruit, but if only a few did, I think we will see an enormous impact leading to real breakthroughs, with a real potential to transform health in the world’s poorest countries. I’d like to point out also that some of these projects may have relevance to our own healthcare issues. For example, there is nothing that will please us more to have a technology of handheld field diagnostics applied widely to our own public health system here. So it may have impact beyond the impact it obviously will have on the issue of global health in developing countries. Finally, I’d like to note the contribution here of the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health to the Grand Challenges initiative. As you may know, the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health was established by Congress, to support the mission of the National Institutes of Health. The FNIH identifies and develops opportunities for innovative public/private partnerships involving industry, academia and the philanthropic community that will synergize with what NIH’s mission is. I think since the beginning of this initiative, working with Dr. Klausner, Dr. Varmus, I think the spirit has been to in fact have a synergy that was in many ways developed and enhanced by the role that the Foundation played in identifying the challenges, reviewing the hundreds of proposals, working with the Gates Foundation, and working with the grantees to ensure that the projects have the greatest possible opportunity for success, and also making sure that in fact the grand challenges were directed in a complimentary way with everything else that NIH does in its portfolio of research in global health. I also would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the leadership of the Gates Foundation and its visionary leadership, in not only enabling the research, but enabling it in new directions, as well as the joining of the Wellcome Trust and the Canadian Institute of Health in this great project. |
This page was last reviewed on June 28, 2005 . |
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