Microsoft founder Bill Gates’ Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation donates $1.2 billion to fight polio. The foundation announced this at the World Health Summit health conference in Berlin.
The money will benefit the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), which has already received a total of $5 billion from the Gates Foundation.
A donor conference for the fight against polio will be held in Berlin on Tuesday. It must raise $4.8 billion to vaccinate 370 million children every year over the next four years against the disease and to care for sick children. Eliminating polio has been a World Health Organization goal since 1988.
The disease, also known as polio, spreads under poor hygienic conditions. However, 99 percent of all infections can be prevented thanks to vaccination and improving living conditions.
Polio causes paralysis and can eventually lead to death. In recent years, progress in the fight against the disease has stalled, partly because children were not vaccinated or were vaccinated too late due to the corona pandemic.
Polio is still found in Pakistan and Afghanistan and was recently diagnosed in Africa for the first time in years. Yet eradication of the disease remains within reach, Bill Gates believes. “If we work together, the world can eradicate this disease.”
