Spring 2005 Issue
Endowment for Global Health Priorities Receives $20,000 Challenge Gift
Bob Keegan, deputy director of CDC's Global Immunization Division, is among a small group of donors who recently announced a $20,000 challenge gift to encourage donations to the CDC Foundation's Endowment for Global Health Priorities. The group, consisting of Bob Keegan; two of his brothers, Timothy and Tom; and Hamid Jafari, director of the Global Immunization Division, has worked with the Foundation to set a goal of raising $1 million for the endowment by 2007.
Created in 1999, the Endowment provides critical flexible funding for important CDC programs operating outside the United States. Gifts to the endowment will help eradicate polio globally and protect children from measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases. Funds from the endowment help meet critical needs in the field when government funding is not readily available.
Through the Endowment, the Foundation has provided funding to purchase bulletproof vests for teams in Somalia, meals-ready-to-eat for teams in Sudan, satellite images of herders and remote populations in Somalia, incentives for participants in a research study on the Mexican border, a motorcycle for vaccine delivery and other supplies needed to conduct vaccination campaigns in inaccessible and sometimes war-torn regions.
Keegan and his fellow donors issued their challenge gift to ensure that this critical source of flexible funding is available to meet whatever challenge arises next in the campaign to eradicate polio and control other vaccine-preventable disease.
"This endowment allows us to focus on the real issues in the field, while rapidly resolving critical, frequently inexpensive operational problems that so often interrupt our work," says Keegan. "It makes things work in small ways for big results."
In the last two decades, international immunization teams have made significant progress toward eradicating or controlling polio and measles. Polio, which affected 350,000 people worldwide in 1988, now affects about 1,000 children. Measles deaths have dropped almost 40 percent since 1999, from 875,000 to about 530,000.
But according to Keegan, stubborn pockets of these diseases remain. "Funding gaps, political obstacles and security issues have all impeded our progress in reaching eradication goals."
Your gift to the Endowment for Global Health Priorities will save lives and prevent disabilities by helping CDC work with partners around the world to stop transmission of polio and measles and to address other global public health challenges. To make a gift, please call the CDC Foundation development office toll-free at (888) 880-4CDC or e-mail ctonney@cdc.gov.