When women are healthy, so is the health of their economy, their country and their community.

Even in the poorest communities, a healthy mother can raise a family. Her thriving children can stay in school. Her grandchildren can be born into a healthy, stable future. She can be an active, productive member of her community.

And yet, women’s traditional roles as the caretakers and brokers of health for their families put them at an unfair risk of contracting infectious diseases. Some of the most devastating infections—HIV/AIDS, malaria and TB—are particularly dangerous to women, who are at a higher disease risk and can have a more severe course of illness than men.

Imagine a world where women won't worry about disease.

There’s a vaccine to prevent malaria. There’s a pill to shorten the course of TB treatment from six months to two weeks. In this world, HIV/AIDS is not the leading cause of death among women of reproductive age. 

How do we reach this hopeful place? The journey begins in Seattle BioMed’s laboratories, where scientists are working to understand how pathogens cause disease and to design effective solutions to put them in check.