BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Laureates Deaton and De Quadros Defend the Advances

BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge laureates Deaton and De Quadros defend the advances made in reducing world poverty

• “It is our human capacity to generate knowledge that enables us to achieve more with fewer resources and confront the problems caused by our own growth, including climate change,” says Deaton

• “The big challenge in public health today is to ensure that the products of science and technology are available to everyone,” de Quadros affirms.

• Ciro de Quadros, Brazilian epidemiologist, received the Development Cooperation award for“leading the effort to eliminate polio and measles from the western hemisphere and being one of the most important scientists in the eradication of smallpox around the world,” in the words of the jury’s citation.

• British economistAngus Deaton received the Economics, Finance and Management awardfor reason of “his fundamental contributions to the theory of consumption, savings, and the measurement of economic wellbeing.”

Madrid, June 19, 2012.- "A lot still needs doing, but the situation has improved.”The quote could be attributed equally to Ciro de Quadros or Angus Deaton, BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge laureates in the Development Cooperation and Economics, Finance and Management categories respectively. De Quadros, a Brazilian epidemiologist and leading actor in the worldwide eradication of smallpox, refers with these words to the improvement secured in global public health,which is also, he stresses, an“indispensable motor of economic growth.” Deaton, an economistwho has researched into both poverty and happiness, is refers to the plight of the very poorest, whichwas “far, far worse fifty years ago.”

Bothexperts are in Madrid to attend the presentation ceremony of the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards on June 21.

At a press conference this morning they talked to journalists about the contributions that earned them the award and what they see as the points of contact in their efforts to address the challenge of development, working as they do from two complementary perspectives: economics and public health.

Deaton, a professor at Princeton University (United States), admits that in countries like India or China economic expansion is widening the gap between rich and poor, butinsists that, despite this fact, their current rate of growth “is doing a lot to improve the lives of the poorest people. We must not yield to the temptation to proclaim from the outsidethat their growth is badbecause it only increases inequality;for that is not the case,” he continues. “Of course it would be fantastic if the poor benefited inthe same measure as the rich, but we don’t know how to achieve that. Not there and not in Western Europe either, and that, for me, is a worrying fact. But certainly there has been an enormous reduction in global poverty.”

For Deaton, “one of the great achievements of the post WWII period” is that 2.5 billion people in China andIndia have come closer to European and U.S. living standards. And, he stresses, this catch-up has been made possible by a major reduction in infant mortality.

For de Quadros, a member of theexecutive staff of theWashington-based Sabin Vaccine Institute,the challenge is to combat inequalities in access to vaccines. “The main goal in public health today is to ensure that the products of science and technology are available to everyone,” he affirms, stressing that this is the goal of the Decade of Vaccinescollaboration launched by the World Health Assembly.

The developed countries, in his view, remain “keenly interested in supporting international vaccination programs despite the global economic crisis.” A recent example he cites is a pledging meeting organized by GAVI (Global Alliance for Vaccine and Immunization),at whichthe association collected 4.2 billion dollars from donor countries versus the 3 billion dollars originally targeted.

Better public health,more economic growth

"Development is not just about being richer; it also means having access to better healthcare,”remarksAngus Deaton, whose work has shown that per capita income is far from being the only indicator of wellbeing. "Of course there is a link between better public health and more development. A healthy population works more and earns more income, while all over the world the disabled or infirm have the lowest income levels.”The same principle operates at the global level: a healthier country will tend to add more to world output growth.

De Quadros adds that at a recent Child Survival Summit led by UNICEF, it was reported that a 10% decrease in infant mortality could increase a country’s income by at least 1%.

The paradox is that the global economy may at times stand in the way of improving the planet’s health. How can we ensure that pharmaceutical companies earn a return on their research investment without at the same timelimiting poor people’s access to drugs and vaccines?

De Quadros calls for “an ongoing dialogue between stakeholders to arrive at solutions that suit everyone.” And he proposes two specific measures: “Increasing the vaccine production capacity of emerging economies,” as a means to bring down prices; and convincing vaccine producers in the industrialized world to “re-design their commercial strategies in ways that will make their products accessible to all.”

Science as a fount of progress

Deaton andde Quadros also concur in acknowledging scientific and technological research as a fount of progress for the economy and healthcare. "Growth is necessary, a country with a growing economycan organize things better,”says Deaton, "but that can only be done by creating knowledge. It is our humancapacity to generate knowledge that enablesus to do more with fewer resources, when they threaten to run out, and confront the problems caused by growth itself, including climate change. That is one of the good reasons why the BBVA Foundation has established these awards. Knowledge is what changes everything.”

In public health, knowledge advances have been instrumental in eliminating diseases like measles and rubellafrom entire continents, including the Americas, and in humanity’ imminent triumph over poliomyelitis, de Quadros points out. And they will be no less vital in future: “We have many new vaccines in the pipeline, against HIV, malaria, tuberculosis and dengue fever,” he relates, and also against conditions, like stomach cancer, which were once considered chronic or degenerative, yet are caused in fact by infectious agents.

Research into forgotten diseases

In the mediumand long term, de Quadros affirms, solidarity and commercial strategies will not suffice to ensure that these advances are universally applied. What is needed, he believes is “a change of paradigm” such that the governments of poor countries assume ownership of their own public health programs: “International agencies still act in a very paternalistic way, with little, if any, involvement of the governments of poorer countries.”

This is the way for these countries to not only reduce their dependence on drugs and vaccines produced in the rich world but also to have their own needs placedon the international research agenda: “There are forgotten diseases that attract little research interest, because they are not a problem for the developed world. Our institute is working to develop vaccines against some of these conditions, like, for instance, schistosomiasis or Chagas’ disease.”

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards

Deaton, de Quadros and the remaining laureates will take part in the presentation ceremony to be held on Thursday, June 21 in the Marqués de Salamanca Palace, Madrid headquarters of the BBVA Foundation. Established in 2008, the Frontiers of Knowledge Awards aspire to be both showcase and tribute to those who dedicate their efforts to the advancement of knowledge and innovation. As such, they are fully congruent with the knowledge map of the 21st century, with eight categories stretching fromclassical disciplines like Basic Sciences; Economics, Finance and Management or Biomedicine to others addressing the challenges of our time, like Development Cooperation, Climate Change, Ecology and Conservation Biology, Information and Communication Technologies and Contemporary Music,orextending the boundaries of our aesthetic and cultural universe.

These international awards have been devised and developed in Spain with assistance from the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC),and form part of the BBVA Foundation’sbroad-ranging support program for scientific knowledge and cultural creation. The philosophy of the Frontiers Awards also connects with the BBVA Group’s long-held conviction that our individual and collective possibilities in the national, corporate and personal spheresdepend more than ever on the promotion of scientific knowledge and innovation and their positive impacts on the environment, health and quality of life.

The architecture of the awards is founded on the quality, rigor and independence of the eight international juries, one for each category, who are tasked with evaluating the nominations put forward by the world’s most prestigious teaching and research institutions.

In the persons of the Frontiers laureates, finally, the Foundation adds to its aim of disseminating science and culturethe possibility of recognizing and upholding the values they represent: those of hard work, enthusiasm and the determination to go beyond the legacy of past generations.

Angus Deaton bio notes

Angus Stewart Deaton was born in Edinburgh (United Kingdom) on October 19, 1945, a bare one-and-a half months after the end of the Second World War. He earned a PhD from the University of Cambridge in 1974 then went on to teach econometrics at the University of Bristol from 1976 to 1983. His first contact with Princeton University was in 1979 as Visiting Professor, and he would later take up a full professorship at this institution, where he remains today.

Deaton is a member of the Chief Economist’s Advisory Council of the World Bank and also a Senior Research Scientist for the Gallup Organization. His work on household survey methodology has led him to collaborate with such diverse organizations as the Committee of National Statistics of the National Academy of Sciences (United States), the Panel on Conceptual, Measurement and Other Statistical Issues in Developing Cost-of-Living Indexes (U.S. National Research Council) and the Social Science Research Center of the Republic of China’s National Science Council.

Author of over 160 publications, he is a corresponding fellow of the British Academy, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and of the Econometric Society and, in 1978, was the first recipient of this society's Frisch Medal for an analysis of consumer demand in the United Kingdom over the first 70 years of the 20th century.

President of the American Economic Association in 2009, he holds honorary doctorates from the University of Rome, University College London and the University of St. Andrews (United Kingdom), and has served successively as Associate Editor, Co-editor and Editor of the journal Econometrica (published by the Econometric Society and one of the most highly ranked economics journals in the world).

Aside from his professorship at Princeton, Deaton has been instrumental in setting up the university’s Center for Health and Wellbeing, Office of Population Research, and Research Program in Development Studies. He is also an associate of the National Bureau of Economical Research (NBER) which brings together over 1,100 professors of economics and business currently working in North America. The NBER’s main areas of research concern are developing new statistical measurements, estimating quantitative models of economic behavior, assessing the economic effects of public policies, and projecting the effects of alternative policy proposals.

Ciro de Quadros bio notes

Ciro de Quadros was born in Brazil, where he first studied medicine (1966) then went on to take a master’s degree in public health (1968). Before leaving medical school he joined a health center in the Brazilian Amazon and set out with his staff to bring immunization levels up to 100% in its catchment area. An ambitious goal, since in the late 1960s immunization rates in many parts of Brazil were less than 10%.

In November 1970, the World Health Organization (WHO) offered him a posting in Africa as Chief Epidemiologist on its Smallpox Eradication Program, working out of Addis Ababa (Ethiopia). The world’s last ever case of the endemic disease was diagnosed in the port town of Merka, in neighboring Somalia, on October 26, 1977.

A bare seven months before, with smallpox on the point of disappearing from Ethiopia, de Quadros had returned to the continent of his birth to join the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) as Senior Advisor on Immunization and

Head of the Expanded Program on Immunization for the Americas. In 1994, he was appointed Director of PAHO’sSpecial Program for Vaccines and Immunization and from there moved to the post of Director of the Division of Vaccines and Immunization, where he remained from 1999 to 2002.

On arriving at PAHO, de Quadros began work on systematic vaccination campaigns against poliomyelitis. By 1981, he had set himself the goal of eradicating polio from the Americas, which many of his colleagues saw as unrealistic. He disagreed, pointing to promising data from two weekends of National Immunization Days held in Brazil. "On each of those weekends, about 20 million children under 5 years of age received a dose of oral polio vaccine," De Quadros wrote in the 1997 book Polio. "Cases of polio dropped dramatically from an average of over 100–200 cases per month to fewer than 20." By 1989, polio had been eliminated from Brazil.

It was this success that persuaded PAHO’s director, Carlyle Guerra de Macedo, to announce the goal of eradicating polio from the Americas at a press conference in 1985. Donors to the enterprise included Rotary International, UNICEF, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the U.S. Agency for International Development, who committed the funds needed to stock up on vaccines.

Civil unrest in countries like El Salvador and Peru meant immunization workers at times feared for their lives. De Quadros accordingly called on the help of UNICEF, the Red Cross, and the Catholic Church, as well as appealing directly to the authorities and guerrilla forces. The result in El Salvador was an agreement to hold what the parties called “days of tranquility”. "We organized three days of tranquility each year,” De Quadros recalls, “and vaccinated nearly every child in El Salvador."

In Peru, similar negotiations with the guerrilla movement Sendero Luminoso soon broke down. Undeterred, de Quadros and his team organized a series of "mop-up" campaigns to help limit poliovirus transmission to just a few areas. They also called on the support of the media, organizing press conferences to appeal to everyone – including the guerrillas – to cooperate with vaccination efforts. By 1991, Peru had reported the last confirmed case of wild polio, and in 1994, an international commission officially declared the disease eradicated from the Americas region.

In 1999, when leading PAHO’s Division of Vaccines and Immunization, de Quadros decided to follow up his successes against smallpox and polio with an all-out campaign to eradicate measles, building on the work done since 1994. In November 2002, the region was able to report having successfully interrupted transmission of the last endemic strain of measles virus.

De Quadros is Associate Adjunct Professor in the Department of International Health of the School of Hygiene and Public Health at The Johns Hopkins University and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Tropical Medicine at the George Washington University School of Medicine. He has also served as Adjunct Professor in the School of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University.

The author of over 80 papers in international journals and four books, he holds an honorary doctorate from the Federal University of Medical Sciences in Porto Alegre (Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil) and distinctions including the World Health Day Award of the American Association for Public Health (1987) and the title of Public Health Hero bestowed by the Mexican Government (2002).

For more information, contact the BBVA Foundation Communication Department (+34 91 374 5210 or +34 94 487 4627/) or visit the Foundation website

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