BIO/Gates Foundation Global Health Forum Starts Tomorrow

WASHINGTON, D.C. (December 3, 2002) – The Partnering for Global Health Forum, co-hosted by the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, starts Wednesday at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington. The forum will bring together industry leaders, potential funders and international health experts to discuss how biotechnology can be used to address diseases in the developing world.

Alan P. Larson, under secretary of economic, business and agricultural affairs for the U.S. Department of State, will speak Thursday, Dec. 5, at the luncheon plenary session, which begins at 12:40 p.m. Larson is the senior economic advisor to Secretary Colin L. Powell, and an expert in international economic policy. Larson has also been a U.S. Ambassador to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris, and served in the economic sections of the U.S. embassies in Jamaica, Zaire and Sierra Leone.

Additional confirmed speakers for the forum include Dr. Elias Zerhouni, director of the National Institutes of Health; Dr. David L. Heymann, executive director of communicable diseases for the World Health Organization; Carl B. Feldbaum, president of BIO; Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; Richard G.A. Feachem, executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; Laurie Garrett, winner of the Pulitzer, Polk and Peabody prizes and author of The Coming Plague; and Dr. Richard Klausner, executive director of Global Health for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Complimentary media registration is available onsite for credentialed members of the news media beginning Wednesday, Dec. 4 at 7:00 a.m. Media credentials and photo identification are required.

BIO represents more than 1,000 biotechnology companies, academic institutions, state biotechnology centers and related organizations in all 50 U.S. states and 33 other nations. BIO members are involved in the research and development of health-care, agricultural, industrial and environmental biotechnology products.

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