Good Ventures awarded a $1 million grant to Population Services International in August 2012 to support a project aimed at slowing the spread of drug resistance to the highly effective antimalarial artemisinin in Myanmar. The project was recommended to us by the Gates Foundation and is the first project we're co-funding with another foundation. We expect this grant to help us learn how a major funder like the Gates Foundation monitors the progress and asseses the impact of a large-scale global health project.
The purpose of the project is to prevent the emergence of drug-resistant malarial parasites in Myanmar by replacing artemisinin monotherapies (AMTs) with artemisinin combination therapies (ACTs) as the primary mode of treatment available for individuals to purchase in the private sector, and by promoting the proper diagnosis and treatment of malaria. The project was estimated to cost $35 million over three years, with approximately $27.5 million previously committed by the Gates Foundation and the UK Department for International Development. Read GiveWell's report on the details of the project.
The goal of co-funding with other foundations is twofold: to support promising projects and, most importantly, to learn how experienced foundations find, monitor and assess the impact of projects. Read more about our rationale for co-funding and how we selected this project. Follow our blog, Give & Learn, for updates on what we learn from this grant and others.