MOZAMBIQUE: Mr Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, travelled to Mozambique yesterday to announce the donation of $168 million to fight malaria, ushering in what some call a new era of philanthropy.
He almost doubled what the rest of the world - governments, the UN and charities - spend on a disease that kills a million people every year, 90 per cent of them in Africa.
Some of the money will accelerate research on new malaria prevention and new drugs to fight drug-resistant strains of the disease. Most of it will go into a quest for a vaccine which could transform the continent.
"It is time to treat Africa's malaria epidemic like the crisis it is," Mr Gates said. "It is unacceptable that 3,000 African children die every day from a largely preventable and treatable disease."
The World Health Organisation and the government of Mozambique hailed the donation as a humanitarian gesture that partly filled a huge gap in funding for malaria research.
Malaria is a parasitic disease, transmitted by mosquitos, of which the most deadly, Plasmodium falciparum, is the most common in Africa. Inside the body the parasite infects the liver and red blood cells, impairing the blood flow to vital organs.
In homes and clinics across the continent the pale, shivering sufferers of the disease can be seen.
Perhaps it was a coincidence, but the announcement came just days after Forbes Magazine published a rich list topped for the 10th consecutive year by Mr Gates and his £28 billion fortune.
The 47-year-old chairman and co-founder of the computer software group is up £1.8 billion from last year because of the improvement in the share price of dotcom stocks, keeping him in a plutocratic class of his own.
After initial criticism that he was hoarding, Mr Gates has promised to give away all his wealth, bar a few million dollars for his two children, before he dies.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which he runs with his wife, overtook the London-based Welcome Foundation several years ago as the world's biggest charitable foundation, with assets of £14 billion. It has already spent more than £1.9 billion on various health projects in developing countries. - (Guardian Service)