GATES FOUNDATION GIVES $26 MILLION TO UNICEF.(MAIN)

Byline: BARBARA CROSSETTE New York Times

UNITED NATIONS -- An American support group for UNICEF, the U.N. children's fund, will announce today that it has received its largest donation ever, a grant of $26 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation earmarked for the elimination of tetanus among babies and their mothers in the poorest nations.

Nearly 250,000 people, most of them infants, died of tetanus in the developing world in 1998, according to the U.S. Committee for UNICEF, the American support group and the oldest of UNICEF's 37 national support committees. Only one newborn infant died of tetanus in the United States in the same year, the …