A report by his foundation calls for global cooperation

Bill Gates: The Corona pandemic has impeded progress in combating poverty and disease

Gates predicts that the epidemic will end in 2022. Archives

The co-founder of Microsoft, the American billionaire Bill Gates, said that the Corona pandemic has interrupted 20 years of progress in combating poverty and disease.

A report by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, published yesterday, showed that the world has retreated, according to nearly every indicator, in its attempts to achieve the United Nations' sustainable development goals, in relation to eradicating poverty and reducing inequality.

Extreme poverty increased by 7% due to the outbreak of the virus, according to the annual "Goalkeepers" report issued by the foundation.

The report noted that the availability of vaccines, an alternative measure of how health systems work, has fallen to levels last seen in the 1990s, "which set the world back about 25 years in 25 weeks."

The data also shows that the economic ramifications of the pandemic reinforce inequality, with women, ethnic minorities, and people living in extreme poverty particularly affected.

The report, which Bill and Melinda Gates has been preparing every year since 2017, called for global cooperation in developing diagnostics, vaccines and treatments, and the rapid manufacture of testing supplies and doses and the fair distribution of these tools, based on need rather than ability to purchase.

"This is a common global crisis, and it needs a common global response," they wrote.

In an interview with the Italian newspaper "Lastampa", Gates said that he was "optimistic" about the ongoing work to develop vaccines against the emerging corona virus.

"If it is effective, even with a vaccination level of 60%, we should be able to stop the accelerating spread of the disease," he added.

He predicted that "next year, the number of deaths will decrease, and the epidemic will end in 2022."

Nevertheless, Gates warned that it will take "two to three years" to repair the damage to "the global health system", and that the poorest countries "will take a decade to bring (their economies) back to pre-crisis levels."

When asked about conspiracy theories that say he invented the Corona virus so that he can benefit from selling vaccines to him, he said: “This story is so strange, that you almost laugh at it, but it is a very serious problem, because if you accuse us of committing satanic acts, you hinder our work. ».


Vaccine availability has declined to levels last seen in the 1990s.

Gates considered the conspiracy theory "a very strange story that you almost laugh at it."

Follow our latest local and sports news, and the latest political and economic developments via Google news