Tuberculosis, or TB, is an infection of the lungs that kills about 1.8 million every year, including 400,000 people with HIV and TB. Historically, TB was dubbed “consumption” because it caused such severe weight loss that the disease appeared to “consume” its patients.
What makes mosquitoes so dangerous? Despite their innocuous-sounding name—Spanish for “little fly”—they carry devastating diseases. The worst is malaria, which kills more than 600,000 people every year; another 200 million cases incapacitate people for days at a time. It threatens half of the world’s population and causes billions of dollars in lost productivity annually. Other mosquito-borne diseases include dengue fever, yellow fever, and encephalitis.
THE END OF MALARIA
Millions of people suffer and die each year in developing countries from causes that humanity has the scientific and technical ability to solve. Global Good is a collaborative effort between Bill Gates and Intellectual Ventures to address this. We take on some of humanity’s toughest problems through the power of invention by drawing on resources normally reserved for commercial pursuits in the developed world.
Mazzi was created by Global Good — a collaboration between Bill Gates and Intellectual Ventures to invent, develop, and deploy technology that improves life in developing countries. Because of this, the Mazzi family of products will be made affordable for low-income stakeholders across the dairy value chain, and any profits from Mazzi sales in developing countries will remain with our local manufacturing and distribution partners.
global PROJECTS
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Intelligent chemical sensing.
Intellectual Ventures invented a tool that uses an unusual weapon to combat vector-borne diseases: light. Called a photonic fence, the invention works by combining low-cost sensor and laser technology with software to identify, track, and kill mosquitoes, thus eliminating malaria’s primary transmission vector.