Mandela to attend forum on health at HSC Dec. 9

Former South African President Nelson Mandela is scheduled to visit the UW’s Warren G. Magnuson Health Sciences Center Thursday, Dec. 9, to participate in a Global Health Roundtable sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Mandela will be joined in the forum by a number of experts in global health and by others, including Foundation co-founder Bill Gates and his father, William H. Gates, Sr., president of the UW Board of Regents.

The invitation-only forum will begin at 9:45 a.m. in Hogness Auditorium and is expected to focus on major challenges facing those working to improve health conditions throughout the world. In addition to researchers and others, including campus and community leaders, the audience will include 100 UW students chosen through a random lottery organized by the UW Office of Student Affairs. Information on the lottery is being published in the UW student newspaper, The Daily.

The public and the UW community will be able to watch the forum live through streaming video at the following website:
http://www.gatesfoundation.org
More information on the Foundation’s programs in global health is also available at this site.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation places a major focus on helping to improve people’s lives through health and learning. Led by the senior Gates and Patty Stonesifer, the Foundation is located in Seattle. Significant Foundation projects include: the Bill and Melinda Gates Children’s Vaccine Program, a $100 million commitment to speed the delivery of lifesaving vaccines to children in developing countries; the Maternal Mortality Reduction Program, a $50 million commitment to prevent pregnancy-related deaths of women in developing countries; and the Gates Library Initiative, a major effort to help close the “digital divide” by bringing Internet access to libraries in the poorest communities in Canada and the United States.

Mandela’s participation is part of a visit he is making with his wife Graca Machel, former minister of education for Mozambique, to raise awareness of the work of the Nelson Mandela Foundation and the Foundation for Community Development in promoting peace and social justice in Africa.

Among other prominent participants will be Dr. Seth Berkley, president of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, and Dr. William Foege, global health senior advisor to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Foege, a former director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is a 1961 graduate of the UW School of Medicine. In 1994 he received the UW’s Alumnus Summa Laude Dignatus award. ¶