In 2015, GHIF partnered with Medicines Development for Global Health (MDGH), a not-for-profit biopharmaceutical company, to provide funding for MDGH’s efforts to develop a treatment for onchocerciasis. More commonly known as river blindness, onchocerciasis is a debilitating disease that affects nearly 20 million people in primarily low income countries. All told, nearly 200 million individuals are at risk for river blindness, which is caused by a parasitic worm.

GHIF provided MDGH with $13 million in critical funding to pursue clinical studies, manufacturing, and FDA registration of Moxidectin, an oral treatment for river blindness. In June of 2018, Moxidectin was approved by the FDA as part of their Priority Review Voucher (PRV) program, becoming the first new FDA-approved treatment for the disease in the last 20 years.

Upon the FDA’s approval of Moxidectin, MDGH was awarded an additional Priority Review Voucher, which was sold in May 2019. The sale resulted in substantial returns for GHIF’s investors and significant proceeds from the voucher sale were directed toward additional research on Moxidectin and its deployment in underserved areas. To date, our internal metrics show that Moxidectin is projected to improve as many as 625,000 lives. That number will only grow as the treatment is deployed around the world.