This Tuesday, Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft and one of the biggest living philanthropists asked the world leaders to make vaccines’ research a priority in order to “ save 10 million lives" before 2020.
He made this announcement during the 64th Health World Assembly, which gathers in Geneva about sixty Ministers and 1.800 delegates representing 193 members of the WHO.
Bill Gates, in his speech, was speaking to donor countries and told them to invest more and more in vaccines and immunizations "even if you have to face budgetary crisis"..
Gates stated that thanks to these new investments " Effective systems of immunization will put an end to polio and will allow all children to enjoy five or six new vaccines".
The President of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation made the promise that “We can save four million lives before 2015, and 10 million lives before 2020".
Knowing that a leadership is "essential" to realize his vision, Bill Gates announced that from 2012, his foundation would offer a prize to the person or the organization that would make an innovative and exclusive contribution to the next decade that he named the “decade of vaccines”.
He ended his speech by saying that "The best systems of immunization work when the leaders feel responsible for results".
Calling for world leaders to contribute more and try to make them invest more in research is a very good initiative indeed. But Bill Gates, as being one of the most influential people in the world, probably knows better than no one how things work and move.
He personally benefited from a system that puts profits and assets before anything else. The problem here is not to ask governments to do more efforts especially in a time of important economic recession.
Populations in developed countries are obviously touched by the awful situation in Africa and other parts of the world but are far more concerned by their own problems now.
Instead of calling for governments again and again, Bill Gates and his wealthy contributors should be better try to talk to the big organizations that are actually making profits on this situation.
Big pharmaceutical companies owned by banks prefer to waste vaccines and medicines instead of selling them at a lower price to countries that need them more than anything else.
This is the business they are into and the economical logic they are following is clear and indisputable. Good luck to everyone trying to make them understand that their business model should be changed in order to become philanthropic organizations…
Maybe this is on what governments could act by changing some laws and policies…
But who will pay for the more and more expensive political campaigns afterwards?
