Only a fraction of the billions spent on medical research targets illnesses that affect poor countries, even though these same illnesses account for 90 percent of the world's disease burden.
Each year some 10 million children die before their fifth birthday -- that's almost as though the population of two Marylands were wiped out annually -- and around three-quarters could be saved by basic medicines that already exist.
Fixing the twin injustices of skewed research dollars and haphazard deployment is the mission of the foundation set up by Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda.
Until just a few years ago, history's most generous philanthropist was John D. Rockefeller, whose dominance of the oil industry in the late 19th century made him the Bill Gates of his time. But the Gateses have already given $28.8 billion, four times as much as Rockefeller measured in inflation-adjusted dollars, and whereas Rockefeller was two months shy of his 70th birthday when he made his first blockbuster donation, the Gateses have taken to philanthropy while still comparatively young.
Yet it's not just the giving that's important. "We don't sit there and say, 'Hey, we gave away $9 billion,' " Bill Gates remarks in another conversation later. "We ask, 'How are we doing against malaria?' "
[Excerpt of an Op Ed by Sebastian Mallaby, The Washington Post]
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