Tachi Yamada is president of the Global Health Program at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

An executive from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is visiting the University of Michigan on Tuesday to discuss the challenges facing children's health in developing countries.

Tachi Yamada, president of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Global Health Program and former physician in chief at U-M's Medical Center, will speak at the fourth annual Susan B. Meister Lecture in Child Health Policy. Yamada's free speech will run from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. at U-M's Biomedical Science Research Building.

Yamada oversees the arm of the massive philanthropic health organization founded by Bill and Melinda Gates that is aimed at addressing health challenges in the developing world, including tuberculosis, HIV, malaria and maternal and child health issues.

Yamada has previously spoken about the number of women who die in pregnancy and childbirth in the developing world and the significant problems posed by childhood illnesses.

The foundation is focusing on goals to immunize 90 percent of children, increasing efforts to fight malaria, providing basic health services to three-quarters of pregnant women and newborns and expanding treatment for diarrhea and pneumonia, it was reported last year.

Last week, foundation and Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates called for creation of better clean energy sources, like spent nuclear fuel, calling climate change solutions more important to those living in developing nations than vaccines. Last month, the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation pledged $10 billion to develop vaccines for children in the developing world.

Yamada received his medical degree from New York University and was an investigator in the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. At U-M, he was chairman of the university Department of Internal Medicine and physician in chief at U-M's medical center. He also formerly served as the chairman of research and development and a member of the Board of Directors of GlaxoSmithKline.

Reservations are required for the speech and can be made by contacting U-M's Child Health Evaluation and Research Unit at 734-936-3682 or visiting www.chear.umich.edu.

Tina Reed covers health and the environment for AnnArbor.com. You can reach her at tinareed@annarbor.com, call her at 734-623-2535 or find her on Twitter @TreedinAA.