Devex: Tackling the silent killers of children
Anita Zaidi, director of the Enteric and Diarrheal Diseases (EDD) program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

“…Based on our understanding of the global burden of typhoid and the public health threat, the [Gates Foundation] has made a recent decision to expand investments in typhoid, as part of our strategy to reduce the impact of enteric infections on the most impoverished. We will focus on the development of typhoid conjugate vaccines [TCVs], given that TCVs have potential to overcome programmatic barriers faced by older typhoid vaccines, which are not targeted for eliciting immunity in young children. Additional key areas of work will include improving surveillance systems to accurately measure disease burden, and developing a multi-sectoral intervention toolkit that incorporates both vaccine and WASH interventions against typhoid…” (2/19).