Bill Gates is promising $10 billion dollars worth of vaccines for the developing world. His wife Melinda and he have been involved in many foundations and organization that support this sort of outreach. It should be possible to prevent the deaths of 7.6 million children under five between 2010 and 2019, Gates told reporters at the World Economic Forum.
Wow! That’s a log of kids at just over $1 a child. Can you imagine what we could do if we all supported this sort of effort. I know they are wealthy and have a means to create the cash to support this sort of effort – but just over a dollar to save a life! We spend more than that on a coke at the gas station.
Margaret Chan, director-general of the World Health Organization said an extra two million deaths in children under five could be prevented by 2015 by widespread use of new vaccines and a 10 percent increase in global immunization coverage.
Of course this has undertones of health reform, but that is another issue entirely. Let me know what you think.