Bill Gates Pushes For Final Eradication Of Polio
The New York Times reports:
On Monday, in a Manhattan town house that once belonged topolio’s most famous victim, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Bill Gates made an appeal for one more big push to wipe out world polio.
Although that battle began in 1985 and Mr. Gates started making regular donations to it only in 2005, he has emerged in the last two years both as one of the biggest donors — he has now given $1.3 billion, more than the amount raised over 25 years by Rotary International — and as the loudest voice for eradication.
As new outbreaks create new setbacks each year, he has given ever more money, not only for research but for the grinding work on the ground: paying millions of vaccinators $2 or $3 stipends to get pink polio drops into the mouths of children in villages, slums, markets and train stations.
He also journeys to remote Indian and Nigerian villages to be photographed giving the drops himself. Though he lacksAngelina Jolie’s pneumatic allure, his lingering “world’s richest man” cologne is just as aphrodisiacal to TV cameras.
He also uses that celebrity to press political leaders. Rich Gulf nations have been criticized for giving little for a disease that now chiefly affects Muslim children; last week in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Mr. Gates and Crown Prince Sheik Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan jointly donated $50 million each to vaccinate children in Pakistan and Afghanistan. In Davos, Switzerland, Mr. Gates and the British prime minister, David Cameron, announced that Britain would double its $30 million donation. Last month, when the Pakistani president, Asif Ali Zardari, went to Washington for the diplomat Richard C. Holbrooke’s funeral, Mr. Gates offered him $65 million to initiate a new polio drive. Twelve days later, publicly thanking him, Mr. Zardari did so.
However, even as he presses forward, Mr. Gates faces a hard question from some eradication experts and bioethicists: Is it right to keep trying?
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