The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provided the money to help clarify the human toll of salmonella disease, which kills many infant children in sub-Saharan Africa.
The university's Centre for International Health will co-ordinate international efforts to clarify the extent of the ''disease burden'' involving typhoidal and non-typhoidal salmonella disease in Africa.
The project includes support for collating and publishing data on the illness, disability, and death caused by a group of bacteria called non-typhoidal salmonella in Africa.
Prof John Crump, the Otago centre co-director, said it was ''shocking'' that an accurate estimate was not already available.
Salmonella disease killed about 500,000 people, many of them infants, each year, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa.
These official disease burden estimates were crucial to allocating health resources for disease control, but the number of salmonella sepsis illnesses and deaths was not officially recorded at present.
Without an official disease burden estimate, it was hard to gain funding to fight the disease.
Salmonella blood poisoning deaths had been ''completely off the radar'' and bringing accurate information together was ''the first step in making a difference''.
The disease was often misunderstood in developed countries.
In New Zealand, people tended to think of salmonella as a cause of diarrhoea.
But in sub-Saharan Africa non-typhoidal salmonella was a leading cause of sepsis or blood poisoning.
''There, infants, malnourished children, children with recent malaria, and HIV-infected adolescents and adults are particularly susceptible.
''About 20% of those who get salmonella blood poisoning will die,'' he said.
He was ''delighted'' the university had been chosen to lead this project.
Prof Crump will head this ''exciting initiative'' with Prof Robert Heyderman, Professor of Tropical Medicine, at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, university officials said.
And the project would also use the expertise of leaders in the field from throughout the world.
