MSU Using $5.8M Gates Grant On Africa Child Deaths
EAST LANSING (AP) - Michigan State University says it's using a $5.8 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to find the causes and seek to prevent the death of children from bacterial diseases in sub-Saharan Africa.
The university says the project aims to prevent what is the leading cause of death for children in the region. The bacterial diseases include pneumonia, sepsis and meningitis and they kill more people in the area than malaria.
The Nigeria-based project involves collecting local data on the diseases and promoting the use and development of vaccines.
Lead researcher professor Stephen Obaro says Nigeria, and many of its neighbors trail the developed world in dealing with bacterial diseases because of poor diagnostic work and lack of access to vaccines.
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