Bill Gates: Right now, the disease we're focused
on is polio.
The world finished smallpox officially in
1980 -- was when they signed the certificate.
Polio we hope to get done, get our certificate
by 2018, and then if, you know, the credibility,
the energy from that will allow us to take
the new tools we'll have then and go after
a malaria plan.
John Green: I also wanted to ask you about
the P6, the keg of life, as you called it?
Bill: Well, often something will be invented
and people won't realize that it has a use
in poor countries.
You can make these thermoses that leak, the
heat leaks in very, very slowly, you know,
that was invented like 15 years ago, and nobody
thought, oh, well, hey, we can help poor countries
with this cold chain problem, because for
them, they don't have electricity, even getting
kerosene and propane is expensive, it's unreliable.
We built the first one about a year ago, and
now they're out in the field.
You don't need that in the United States,
because our refrigerators are very reliable,
you know, we assume we have 24 hour electricity,
we assume patients can easily get to the doctor,
so the matching of the good ideas with the
big important needs, that's a pretty imperfect
process.
John: You seen very careful, actually, not
to talk about giving money away and instead,
have repeatedly said that you're giving money
back.
Bill: Well, capitalism is a weird system.
I mean, it's a fantastic system; it provides
an incentive for people to work, but it means
that somebody who, by having certain skills
and creating a company at the right time,
can end up with a mind-blowing amount of resources.
So Melinda and I, my wife, talked about this,
where's the greatest injustice, where can
a dollar save a life or avoid malnutrition?
In studying that, that's why we ended up saying,
boy, in poor countries, you can have this
huge impact.
John: I wonder if you can kind of talk about
where you see the healthcare system of Ethiopia
in five or ten years, and when you see that
making a sort of overall economic impact in
the health of the country.
Bill: Well, the last ten years, they've gotten
their childhood death rate down from over
15% down to about 8%, and they should be able
to get it down below 2%; the US is below 1%.
Also, the malnourishment, which you see through
stunting, still pretty high here.
And by finding the children that aren't growing
and getting nutritious foods out and proving
agriculture productivity, that'll be able
to virtually eliminate malnutrition.
That means Ethiopia will, and this is their
stated goal, be a middle-income country by
2025.
They absolutely can get there, and the progress
is very exciting.
Health is such an enabling piece, and the
country's really pulling together; the system
is well-designed; you know, the donors, like
ourselves, are here and trying to think, okay,
what tools are missing?
So it's a very positive story, uh, one that
I don't think most people know about.
