Gates Says Too Many Kids' Deaths Are Preventable

According to the World Health Organization,about 2.2 million kids under the age of 5 die every year from diarrhealdiseases. The vast majority of these deaths could be prevented withbasic hygiene, water quality improvements and sanitation.

Why isit so hard to fix these problems? In the past, focus has been tooheavily on major infrastructure projects, which have provedprohibitively expensive for developing countries to build and maintain.Now innovators are starting to think about simpler, lower-techsolutions.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundationhave granted $10.9 million to researchers at the University ofCalifornia, Berkeley, to conduct evaluations of several such solutions,according to a press release.The interventions they are testing are "combined intervention packages"that join approaches to sanitation, water and hand-washing togetherinto single projects.

"Right now, it is unknown whether singleinterventions are as cost effective as combinations of theseinterventions. This grant will fund the first large-scale, randomizedimpact evaluation designed to gather rigorous evidence about thisquestion," said Dr. Jack Colford, professor of epidemiology at UCBerkeley's School of Public Health and the project's coordinator.

Thestudy will take on its randomized impact evaluation in Bangladesh andKenya to uncover whether the results of these packaged small-scalesolutions compare to the traditional large-scale interventions.