GAVI, say the Gateses, is the best investment they ever made. More than 670,000 lives saved already. Bill is enthusiastic about the possibility that it will become the pilot project of Gordon Brown's scheme to raise billions for the developing world, the international financing facility. If they get to US$8 billion to US$12 billion, they can immunize 90 percent of children against common but lethal diseases by 2015.
In 2002, almost 1.5 million children died from vaccine-preventable diseases.
But the Gateses believes their role is to take on the riskier and more difficult enterprises. Is an AIDS vaccine possible? Nobody yet knows, but the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is out there paying for research to find out.
A malaria vaccine has always been a tricky prospect. They're in there too. It's the big challenges where they may make a difference that will put them in the history books.
"If we look back and there's an AUDS vaccine, I think we'll feel phenomenal about the money that we've spent and I think if we've changed malaria, that there's really a malaria vaccine and the right malarial medicines being delivered, we'll feel fantastic about the money," says Melinda. "Not that we don't already - the spending -- but I think those are big markers for us."
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