Gates Grants $2M To Refugees

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Wednesday announced it has donated $2 million to improve health care for refugees worldwide.

The grant is the largest of its kind to the New York-based International Rescue Committee (IRC).

"This generous gift...will save lives," IRC President Reynold Levy said. "Some of the world's most vulnerable people, especially women and young children, will escape harm because of the work the grant will make possible. The grant is already being put to use funding a health assessment of refugees who fled East Timor."

The grant will fund similar work among refugees and displaced persons in Kosovo and the central African nations of Guinea and Guinea-Bissau.

Health assessments can be crucial, said Dr. Richard Brennan, director of the rescue committee's health program.

In Februrary, he said, a health assessment in a war-affected province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo revealed that more than 1,200 young children had died of measles in the preceeding six months. As a result, IRC organized a campaign that vaccinated some 80,000 children against measles and polio.

The International Rescue Committee was founded in 1933 at the suggestion of Albert Einstein to assist those fleeing Hitler. It operates resettlement offices in 20 U.S. cities and assists refugees and displaced persons in 28 countries.

The Seattle-based Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, backed by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, has made a number of other significant donations to health and education groups, including a $100 million commitment to speed delivery of vaccines to children in developing countries.