You’re invited: A very special polio event with Bill Gates

Jan 27th, 2011 11:01 AM UTC
By Malaka Gharib

I’ve got some really cool news: Next Monday, Brooke Riley (one of our fabulous global health experts) and I (your trusty ONE blogger) will be heading up to New York City for a very special event hosted by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, “Polio Eradication and the Power of Vaccines.”

We are seriously this close to beating polio. Thanks to a global childhood immunization effort, polio has been reduced by 99 percent. If we can get that number to 100, it will be the second disease in history to be completely eliminated.

And that’s exactly what panelists and special guests are going to talk about on Monday — the extraordinary progress in the fight to eradicate polio and the enormous life-saving potential of vaccines. The event will also mark Bill Gates’ third annual letter, an update on his work at the foundation and lessons that he learned from the year.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Dr. David Oshinsky, WHO Chair Helen Rees and Sabin Executive Vice President Dr. Ciro de Quadros will be speaking at the event, along with a group of vaccine leaders from Nigeria and Pakistan.

The best part of all? You can be there, too. We invite you to watch the event on the ONE Blog — we’ll be live streaming it in a webcast at 9:30 a.m. ET. Don’t forget that Brooke and I will be covering the event live, so be sure to check our Tweets, Facebook updates and video interviews, too.

Photo courtesy of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

TAGS: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, ONE, Polio, vaccines