Bill Gates Calls For ‘Detailed Plan’ To Eradicate Polio By 2018

“Polio, the paralyzing viral infection once found across the world, is likely to be eradicated within the next five years, according to Bill Gates, the billionaire U.S. philanthropist [and co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which] is working with governments and health agencies to conquer the disease,” the Financial Times reports. “In his latest annual letter, to be released on Wednesday, Mr. Gates described polio eradication as ‘a top priority’ for his Seattle-based foundation,” the newspaper adds (Barber, 1/29).

“Delivering the annual Richard Dimbleby lecture in London on Tuesday, Gates … said ridding the world of polio would be ‘one of the great moral and practical achievements of our age,'” AFP/France24 writes (1/30). “Gates concluded his lecture, delivered at the Royal Institution, by calling for the implementation of a ‘detailed plan’ to eradicate polio by 2018,” the Press Association/Guardian notes (1/29). Speaking on the video program BBC Breakfast, Gates said “that ‘we have so few cases that if we really intensify our efforts we will completely eradicate the disease,'” BBC News writes (1/29).

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