So does this:
Guess all the car manufacturers should have stopped kicking out new models after this one.
Posted on 05/31/2002 7:11:58 PM PDT by Dallas
BEIJING --
A charity created by Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates will donate $37.5 million to combat hepatitis B in China, where two-thirds of the disease's victims live.
The Vaccine Fund's gift will be used to help immunize 35 million infants over the next five years against the potentially lethal blood-borne ailment, fund Executive Vice President James Jones said Friday.
The Chinese government will spend another $37.5 million on the project, which will buy vaccines to immunize newborn children in poor rural areas.
The money will also buy 500 million self-disabling syringes -- specially designed to be used only one time. Reuse of dirty needles and syringes has been a leading cause of hepatitis B infection in China.
Every year, as many as 400,000 people in China die from liver cancer and other liver ailments caused by the disease, Jones said.
"People forget that two-thirds of hepatitis B infections worldwide are in China. If we can make progress here, we're getting somewhere," Jones said.
He said the project will be finalized in an agreement to be signed Saturday in Beijing by The Vaccine Fund, the Chinese government and the U.N.-backed Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations.
UNICEF, which is part of the alliance, will help train Chinese health workers and monitor the money's use.
Some 60 percent of China's 1.3 billion people have had hepatitis B in their lifetime. Most recover without problems, but about 100 million have become permanent carriers -- meaning they can spread the disease and are vulnerable to liver illnesses.
Like the AIDS virus, hepatitis B is spread through sex or contact with blood.
Experts say the disease in China is often spread among children, as doctors reuse needles and syringes while administering routine immunizations against other illnesses. This mostly takes place in poor rural areas.
"It's usually not a matter of bad training or even malice. It's a matter of poverty," Jones said.
He said one aim of the project is to supply enough self-disabling syringes to use in every immunization in China, not just hepatitis B shots.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation created The Vaccine Fund three years ago with a $750 million grant. Donations by Western governments have helped increase the fund's size to $1.1 billion.
Copyright © 2002, The Associated Press
I like this gift very much-- it's smart, pragmatic, and most of all, it employs leverage, leverage, leverage. The Gates Foundation identified a specific problem (Hep B) with a specific cause (needle reuse) and no complicating factors to interfere with a specific solution (unlike druggies who reuse needles because they act out of their addiction). They start their foundation with some money, and get matching funds from various governments. They they make the Chinese government match their vaccine gift, and bring in a fairly strong international body (UN) to monitor the usage. I especially like that they took the time to research a self-enforcing solution (Docs use the vaccination needles only once, whether they want to reuse them or not). There is no part of this gift that can be resold, redistributed, or otherwise siphoned off for personal gain or general corruption. If doctors dont want to use the individually packaged vaccines for sick patients, there is no possible other use for them.
This is the perfect market solution to a general health problem. All (or almost all) of the incentives for misallocation of resources have been removed from the distribution chain.
I've seen too many NGOs or Foundations simply throw money at a problem, only to see 90% of it line the pockets of tinpot dictators or local warlords. And then, confronted with the loss of resources, their answer is to haul in more international monitors, to try and watch. All this does is introduce more pockets to be lined. In this instance, Bill's foundation identified the problem and attacked it using a smart, savvy solution.
I know full well that the variety of manufacturers for the IBM platform are not there because of Bill, but none the less he played a role in making those systems more user friendly. You and I both know that there is better software out there for people who have some knowledge in the field, but the vast majority of people expect to sit down, power up the computer and dink around doing the piddling tasks you mentioned. Games, e-mail and an occasional letter to a friend. Bill Gates has provided the means for them to do that, even though they have to continuely buy more upgrades and restart their computer to clear problems not of their making.
I joked awhile back when the Justice department was prosecuting him that what he needed to do was just to move offshore and buy his own country. Someplace like Cuba, or Belize where the weather is nicer. He could then make his own rules without fear of government intervention.
He will never be remembered by me for more than that.
I don't think you understand supply and demand. If everyone is buying it, I hardly think it is overpriced.
So does this:
Guess all the car manufacturers should have stopped kicking out new models after this one.
Exactly! It's hismoney and not ours and he can spend it whichever way he wishes. I wished the whining and jealousy would stop
patent
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As we amended the Social Security Act in 1967, I was impressed by the sensible approach of Alan Guttmacher, the obstetrician who served as president of Planned Parenthood. It was ridiculous, he told the committee, to blame mothers on welfare for having too many children when the clinics and hospitals they used were absolutely prohibited from saying a word about birth control. So we took the lead in Congress in providing money and urging -- in fact requiring -- that in the United States family planning services be available for every woman, not just the private patient with her own gynecologist. George Bush (Foreword to World Population Crisis by Phyllis Piotrow), 1973 |
US prisons pumped plasma throughout the 80's. (Thanks largely to the able defense of folks like Bruce Babbitt who managed to his own State of Arizona against the '77 suit of a prisoner who alleged Hep-C infection from that state's plasmapheresis program.)
Worst case scenarios -- like Angola in Louisiana and Bill Clinton's bleed program in Cummins (shut down three times by the FDA in the 80's) -- continued pumping through 1994.
Luckily, though most developed nations were hip to the problem of importing derivatives produced at a Canadian middleman's labs from US batches, plenty of underdeveloped nations (and China) were available for dumping the questionable product.
I would not have advised him to give money to either of these causes, but he didn't ask me.
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