UAE: $1.9 Billion Aid To Eradicate Polio, Bill Gates To Donate $1.2 Billion

(MENAFN- Khaleej Times)

Donors on Monday committed $1.9 billion (nearly Dh7 billion) to eradicate polio globally, including $1.2 billion commitment announced by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, on the first day of Abu Dhabi Finance Week.

Gates also praised the UAE and its leadership for their contribution to the global charity initiatives to fight diseases in poor countries.

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“The UAE's government and leadership have been fantastic not only for their contributions to fight polio in the poor countries and other initiatives,” Bill Gates said while announcing his contribution at the conference.

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“It's been interesting talking with our phenomenal partners here in the UAE about their connection to this cause of eradicating polio... I always encourage people to go visit and see these things, because everybody you know deserves to see that. You know, a single child's death is a tragedy, and here we're talking about, you know, saving millions of lives, preventing millions of kids from being paralyzed from diseases like polio,” he said during the panel discussion.

He said:“25 years up till now, we had everything working in our favor, more generosity, buying vaccines for all the world's children, global funds working on areas like malaria, HIV, and TB. We have come a long way. We have a little bit of headwind now. This is the first year that generosity will go down, and there's a direct connection between how much we spend buying those tools to help those primary healthcare systems and the lives we save,” he said.

“Asia continues to make good progress, and the name of the game here is that if a country is healthy, then it can educate its kids and have economic growth, and become self-sufficient. So many recipients, such as India, Indonesia, and Vietnam, that received funding and other primary health care support are now completely self-sufficient. Although we have a long way to go to get every country to that point, our aspiration over the next 20 years is that we get every country to have healthy kids,”he said

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is a founding partner and the largest private funder of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. Gavi is a public-private partnership focused on vaccinating children in low-income countries against deadly diseases.

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