Gateses to lobby U.S. for global health funds

Washington Post ^ | October 27, 2009 | Susan Kinzie

[La Lydia]

Bill and Melinda Gates will make a personal appeal to Washington officials Tuesday, asking them to continue funding global health initiatives despite the recession and to commit to nearly halve the number of child deaths worldwide by 2025...The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the largest private foundation in the world. But Gates said that even with its great wealth, the fund is focused on being a catalyst for much larger government-funded projects..."We have put about $11.9 billion in global health since the inception of this," she said..."Our money is tiny."

The U.S. government's annual contribution to global health initiatives has increased dramatically in recent years, from $1.5 billion in 2001 to $7.7 billion in 2009.

Bill Gates, who made his fortune as a founder of Microsoft, will appear Tuesday evening at the Shakespeare Theatre Company' in Washington, where he will address members of Congress, the U.S. global AIDS and malaria coordinators, the health policy counselor for the White House Office of Management and Budget and others.

The presentation, meetings with lawmakers and the media campaign are meant to show that U.S. funding is saving lives and that the Gateses think child deaths worldwide can be cut from more than 9 million to 5 million a year in the 15 years. They point to an AIDS program launched in 2003 by President George W. Bush that is estimated to have saved more than 1 million lives. A Bush initiative on malaria reached an estimated 32 million people last year. And the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which gets a third of its budget from the United States, helped bring 88 million bed nets to children at risk of getting malaria...

U.S. lawmakers will be debating massive spending programs even as they face an enormous deficit...

[La Lydia]

"We are the world" and our hard-earned money isn't ours, it belongs to the world too, regardless of the fact that we are enduring a deep recession. Before this guy starts giving away money that doesn't belong to him, he should run through his own fortune. His $60 billion might make a dent in the world shortage of health care programs he advocates. The only interesting part of this story is that, at last, the Wash Post has acknowledged the enormous contribution the evil Bush made to these efforts. Why is this our sole responsibility? And had the amount of money spent on bed nets been spent on DDT, malaria would have been eradicated years ago.

[Paladin2]

Gates could just hand out licenses and .iso’s for Win7 and those folks could sell them off. It’d be billions.

[equalitybeforethelaw]

Simple, lets export the Cuban model of healthcare - I hear from all the right people that it is a model that should be followed.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Give till it hurts, Bill.

[silverleaf]

there ya go

Save half the world's children, donate all his license and profits to them, that’ll do it

I'm sure he's a big fan of George Bush and how many children were spared in Iraq by a man taking decisive action and doing away with those genocidal sanctions (sarc)

[Dr. Ursus]

From pompous nerd to pompus ass.

[A.A. Cunningham]

and to commit to nearly halve the number of child deaths worldwide by 2025

Except for the deaths caused by abortion which Bill and Melinda Gates wholeheartedly endorse and support.

[La Lydia]

Third World lives are more important than the lives of American unborn children, dontcha know.