The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is giving its annual award for global health to an African organization that began as a flying hospital.
The Kenya-based African Medical and Research Foundation will receive the one million US dollar (6 mio. DKR) prize based on almost 50-year history of working to improve poor and rural Africans health and Kenyas health care infrastructure.
The research foundation “has been saving lives year after year for decades and should give us all hope that even the most complex health challenges can be overcome,” Bill Gates, the billionaire founder of Microsoft Corp., said in a statement.
AMREF, founded in 1957 and originally called Flying Doctors of East Africa, provides rural Africans air transport to health centers, often without charge. The group also serves Africans through treatment and prevention of disease, works for clean water and proper sanitation and trains health care professionals in Africa.
The Gates Award was established in 2000 by Gates and his wife, Melinda, to reward especially effective health organizations around the world.
Kilde: The Push Journal
