Bill Gates pledges $10 billion to vaccinate children

Source: Gizmodo.com

Bill Gates spoke with Sanjay Gupta (CNN) recently and is pledging $10 billion over 10 years to vaccinate children worldwide.  Gates' plan:

"Over this decade, we believe unbelievable progress can be made, in both inventing new vaccines and making sure they get out to all the children who need them. We could cut the number of children who die every year from about 9 million to half of that, if we have success on it. We have to do three things in parallel: Eradicate the few that fit that profile -- ringworm and polio; get the coverage up for the vaccines we have; and then invent the vaccines -- and we only need about six or seven more -- and then you would have all the tools to reduce childhood death, reduce population growth, and everything -- the stability, the environment -- benefits from that."

My favorite quote (the counterfactual):  "In fact, it is so simple, people often forget what a big deal this is. The 2 million people that would have died from smallpox now don't think, 'Wow, I'm alive today because of vaccinations,' but that's the case."

It will be interesting to see if this effort can lead to 6 or 7 new vaccines.  A key one would be an influenza vaccine that targets a conserved region of the virus, which would eliminate the need for costly annual vaccinations.  I think we will also need a similar effort to identify new antibacterials before too long.

Full transcript and video of Bill Gates interview (CNN.com)

h/t gizmodo