The Gates Vaccine Innovation Award: US $250,000 prize

The Gates Vaccine Innovation Award is open to individuals from different discipline. Candidates from, governments, health care facilities, academic institutions, research institutions, non-profit organizations and for-profit companies may be nominated.

The Gates Vaccine Innovation Award will celebrate revolutionary ways to immunize children in the poorest parts of the world. The winning innovation will be recognized with a US $250,000 prize. Lives of several people could be saved by improved access to vaccines. Vaccines are cost-effective, safe and proven to protect children from disease. Continued innovation is essential to overcome persistent challenges in reaching more children with vaccines.

Nominees will be assessed on three broad criteria:

•Developing country impact- The nominee should have contributed to the prevention, control, or elimination of vaccine-preventable disease through significant improvements in immunization quality and coverage among mothers and children in developing countries.

•Innovation and creativity- The nominee should have applied imaginative and pioneering approaches to overcome difficult challeges to immunizing children and achieving impact. Innovation is not the same as invention. Even simple ideas applied in creative ways to overcome real-world challenges can be considered innovative.

•Scale – The nominee’s innovation should be at scale or suitable to be implemented at scale within the nominee’s country and around the world.

The winner of the first Gates Vaccine Innovation Award was announced in Bill Gates’ 2012 annual letter. The 2012 Award recognizes the work of Dr. Asm Amjad Hossain, a former district immunization and surveillance medical officer in Bangladesh.

Deadline: Nominations will be accepted through 11:59 PM Pacific Standard Time on August 31, 2012.

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