Bill Gates cites data from a study by FBK at the World Economic Forum 2017

The presentation by Bill Gates took place during this year’s WEF in Davos that focused on the initiatives of CEPI (Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations), an alliance of which the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is partner, and whose aim is to fund and coordinate the development of new vaccines as well as to contain the spread of epidemics. Gates cited data compiled by the international study “Containing Ebola at the Source with Ring Vaccination” (Published last November on the specialized journal “PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases”), to which Fondazione Bruno Kessler contributed, dedicated to the most effective way to contain future outbreaks of Ebola also when relatively few doses of vaccine are available.

The discussion at the World Economic Forum highlights a further recognition for the research of Fondazione Bruno Kessler that, as part of the mathematical models of Ebola spread in West Africa, had been awarded the Aspen Prize in 2016 for cooperation and scientific research between Italy and the US for a paper published in the well-known journal Lancet Infectious Diseases.

Another important international recognition this year for Fondazione Bruno Kessler in the field of virus spread studies is the scientific work on the Zika virus conducted by FBK researchers Stefano Merler and Piero Poletti, in collaboration with the ISI Foundation in Turin, the Northeastern University of Boston, the University of Florida and the University of Washington, published on the latest edition of PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), one of the most cited journals worldwide in the field of research.

The Scientific Study titled “Measles Immunity Gaps and Progress Towards Elimination: A Multi-Country Modeling Analysis” published in 2017 in the journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases, on which researchers from Fondazione Bruno Kessler in Trento worked in collaboration with the Bocconi University of Milan, also showed that since the early 1980s, the measles vaccine has earned Italians nearly a million years of life.