Bill Gates donates $255 million to complete the war on polio

(January 22, 2009) Nearly a decade after the international community missed its first deadline for wiping out polio, Bill Gates has donated $255 million to the latest push to finally rid the world of the infectious disease. "I'm optimistic we're going to be successful," said Gates, who announced the grant Wednesday 21^st of January, at a Rotary International conference in San Diego. He spoke of having an in-law with polio -- an aunt of his wife who wears leg braces. And he spoke of those still afflicted in poor countries, and of the need to remain committed to completing the task begun about 20 years ago. Polio remains a problem in Nigeria, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Cases of the infectious, crippling disease have declined dramatically from about 350,000 when the World Health Organization launched the eradication campaign, but the goal of eliminating the disease has proved elusive. In 1988, when the global polio campaign was launched, the WHO said the disease would be eradicated in 2000. In 2004, with polio still spreading, the U.N. agency called for a renewed push, saying the world was at a crossroads with a "historic, one-time-only opportunity" to eliminate polio by 2005. Nobody is setting any more target dates. But the WHO official, along with Gates, emphasized that 2013 is not a "target" so much as a general game plan. The virus has just proved a more formidable foe. The $255 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is a challenge grant requiring Rotary to also raise $100 million over the next three years. The money is part of a renewed international push that includes $150 million from Britain and $130 million from Germany.