Improving Healthcare in the Third World

People can say what they want about Bill Gates and his business practices but I am nothing but happy with his philanthropic efforts. We need more people like him to provide funding to find solutions to the problems that plague society.

I appreciate someone who uses their wealth in this fashion.

GENEVA - Microsoft Corp. chairman Bill Gates, in announcing an expansion to the $4 billion he's already spent on health initiatives, said he wants to step up the focus on the diseases that afflict poorer nations.

In an interview, he said those illnesses are generally ignored by pharmaceutical companies because they are unknown in wealthier nations, contributing to inequities in health conditions between the poor and the rich.

"I was stunned as I learned about these gaps," Gates told The Associated Press. "Another way of putting that is that we treat the value of human lives equally and say we're willing to invent the medicines and spend the money to make sure that children survive and we get rid of these epidemic diseases."

Gates also said he is using the same strategy that succeeded in building Microsoft to tackle AIDS, malaria and other deadly diseases around the world.

-----Gates told the 192-nation body that he was adding $250 million — for a total of $450 million — to a project he began in 2003 to get the world's top scientific minds to take on the deadliest diseases."

According to the same article Bill and Melinda Gates have contributed more than $4 billion to global health since 1995.