Excerpt:
Melinda and I read an article about the millions of children who were
dying every year in poor countries from diseases that we had long ago
made harmless in this country. Measles, malaria, pneumonia, hepatitis
B, yellow fever. One disease I had never even heard of, rotavirus, was
killing half a million kids each year - none of them in the United
States.
We were shocked. We had just assumed that if millions of
children were dying and they could be saved, the world would make it a
priority to discover and deliver the medicines to save them. But it did
not. For under a dollar, there were interventions that could save lives
that just weren't being delivered.
If you believe that every life has equal value, it's revolting to learn
that some lives are seen as worth saving and others are not. We said to
ourselves: "This can't be true. But if it is true, it deserves to be
the priority of our giving."
So we began our work in the same way anyone here would begin it. We asked: "How could the world let these children die?"
The
answer is simple, and harsh. The market did not reward saving the lives
of these children, and governments did not subsidise it. So the
children died because their mothers and their fathers had no power in
the market and no voice in the system.
But you and I have both.
http://blog.jhong.org/2007/06/good-speech-by-bill-gates.html
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