Former CEO of Microsoft and famous multi-billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates predicts the end of polio and three other diseases from the world in the next 15 years.
“It’ll be 2018 or within one or two years of that,” Gates said in an interview yesterday adding that it will be a “much better eradication track record in these 15 years than in all of human history.”
Africa hasn’t had a case in the past six months, with most of the cases recorded in Pakistan last year. Gates said that the Pakistani government is stepping up its efforts against polio, “knowing they’re last, the spotlight’s on them.”
It takes three years of no documented cases to certify that a disease has been eradicated, so the earliest that polio will be declared over is 2018.
The Gates Foundation’s own ambitious 15-year agenda, spelled out in its latest annual letter, foresees the elimination of polio and three other diseases and says Africa will be able to feed itself.
