In a move lauded by global health agencies, Bill and Melinda Gates announced that their foundation would donate $10 billion dollars over the next decade to fund vaccine research, development and delivery. This is the Gates Foundation's largest commitment to any global health cause and is more than double the $4.5 billion it spent on vaccines last decade.

“[Vaccines are] the most cost-effective way to reach people and to save lives,” said Melinda Gates on 29 January at a press conference at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland. According to a model developed by researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, the donation could save 8.7 million lives in the coming decade, assuming that the candidate malaria vaccine RTS,S is approved and distributed to at least a million children by 2014 and that 90% of children are immunized against measles, diphtheria, whooping cough, polio, rotavirus and pneumococcal pneumonia.

At the press conference, the foundation highlighted several priorities, including polio eradication and development of new vaccines for malaria, HIV and tuberculosis.