Gates Package — page 1055

nd transmission-blocking drugs idvances to have an impact, a complete solution. If we did, it would revolutionize the field of global health. No more needles and syringes. Vaccines and transmission-blocking drugs that you could inhale with a nasal spray would be much easier to administer than ones that have to be injected. And the micro-needle patches I wrote about earlier would make needles and syringes obsolete. You could pick one up at the grocery and apply it yourself, without help from a health care worker who has to put a needle in your arm, and it might not even need to be kept cold. Researchers are already testing prototypes that deliver measles vaccines, and although this work is moving ahead fast, we need more time and effort to get them ready for market, produce huge volumes of them, and use the patch technology as a platform for going after other diseases. Expanded manufacturing. For all these advances to have an impact, developing and approving them won't be enough. We'll also need to manufacture them in massive volume--enough for the entire world--and within six months. To do that, we'll need production capacity throughout the world, including in regions with the worst disease burden. And we'll need to be creative about how all this new infrastructure can stay in business even when there isn't a pandemic threatening to emerge.