Bill Gates on ending disease, saving lives: ‘Time is on our side’

The billionaire’s foundation aims to eliminate many of the world’s preventable diseases, but it has its critics. “My focus is on the opportunity of the human capital here in Africa,” Gates told Al Jazeera on a recent visit to Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, where he met heads of state at an African Union summit to talk about healthcare. There’s a lot of great exemplars here who have done an amazing job getting their primary healthcare system working and no reason why that can’t be done in all 54 countries.” Gates first turned his efforts to global health, he says, when he realised that hundreds of thousands of children, largely in African countries, were dying of diarrhoea when many of them could have been saved with a simple vaccine. Some argue its vast resources, but narrow focus on healthcare, provides a band-aid to health crises that are caused by deeper political problems in many of the world’s poorest countries. “In health, the amount of controversy is less than you would expect because the idea of saving children’s lives is just not that controversial.” He plans for the foundation to close within 20 years of his and Melinda’s deaths, and hopes that most of these issues will be solved by then, so long as governments continue to invest in the cause.