Bill Gates’ Wake-Up Call

He’s using his fortune to end AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria by 2030. Bill Gates spoke with Brut about his wake-up call on global health equality.

Transcript

00:00Hello, Brute. This is Bill Gates.

00:02Well, it's crazy to me that you're 50 times more likely to die if you're born in Africa

00:09than if you're born in a rich country.

00:23Melinda and I had traveled in Africa

00:26and we were surprised to see what conditions in poor countries were like.

00:31And then we started reading about health and we were shocked

00:35to find that over a million children were dying from malaria every year.

00:39Children were dying of diarrhea even though there was a vaccine being used in richer countries that could prevent that.

00:46And so we realized that was an incredible injustice.

00:50And so we should join together with other people to advance global health and save lives.

00:56We're lucky enough to have the wealth that was created by the success of Microsoft

01:01as well as support that Warren Buffett provided from his business success.

01:07And so the question was how can we take this money and give it back to the world to help those most in need

01:13to save lives, improve lives in the best way possible.

01:16Well, our foundation has global health as substantially its largest priority.

01:21But there's two parts to that.

01:22One is things like Global Fund or the Vaccine Fund that actually buy the tools we have today

01:28and get them out to everyone who needs them.

01:30We also fund a lot of science.

01:33We expect that scientists will be able to create an HIV vaccine.

01:38And so we can finally stop people from getting infected

01:43and then we'll just have the people who've already been infected.

01:46So we put billions into the science part.

01:49We put billions into the delivery part.

01:52It's mostly infectious diseases.

01:54We should be able to cut that dramatically.

01:57We have, in fact, reduced childhood death.

02:00We've cut it in half.

02:02We've reduced HIV deaths, malaria deaths, TB deaths.

02:07And that's why it's so exciting.

02:09This movement is working.

02:11The governments, on behalf of their taxpayers, the scientists, the workers out in the field,

02:18they should celebrate that this is improved justice and great work.

02:25We need a lot of innovation, though, if we're going to get all the way to zero.

02:28It's not easy to eradicate a disease.

02:31The world is close on polio.

02:34And it is the final goal to get rid of all these infectious diseases

02:39that create this incredible health inequity.