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To: William Macko who wrote (7470)	12/7/1998 9:22:00 AM
From: Dean	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9569

Sure would be nice to get some of this 100 Million !!! Hepatitis B Program. Microsoft's Gates Pledges $100 Mln For Vaccines December 3, 1998 NEW YORK (Reuters) - Reuters [OL] via NewsEdge Corporation : Microsoft founder Bill Gates, the wealthiest man in the United States, said Wednesday he was giving $100 million to help vaccinate Third World children. Gates, whose net worth is estimated at about $65 billion, told a news conference advances in medicine constituted a technological miracle but had not permeated the developing world. ''The major challenge of the 21st Century will be to spread the benefits of the new (medical) technology as widely as possible,'' said Gates, whose company is embroiled in an antitrust trial. ''This is the cause that Melinda and I have chosen to focus on in giving back to society,'' said Gates, referring to his wife. The initiative will be administered by the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH), a Seattle organization that in recent years had worked on health and family planning and hepatitis B immunization programs. The World Health Organization, UNICEF, the World Bank and the pharmaceutical industry are also involved, said Dr. Gordon Perkin, president of PATH. Gates said he and his wife decided on a vaccine initiative after seeing the need firsthand during their worldwide travels. Many new vaccines which can prevent millions of children contracting fatal diseases are available only in developed countries, Gates said. ''The only thing standing in the way of saving millions of additional lives in developing countries is ensuring an adequate supply of new vaccines,'' Gates said. ''Our program has a simple goal: to make vaccines that you and I take for granted available to children regardless of where they live.'' Melinda Gates said women in developing nations must often walk 50 to 100 miles (80 to 160 km) and stand in line for days to get their children vaccinated, if they can get vaccinations at all. ''There's a major and worrisome gap between what happens in the developed countries versus what happens in the Third World countries with vaccines,'' she said. Gates, a controversial figure in the software industry, denied that the gift was designed to prevent his image being tarnished by the Microsoft antitrust trial. ''If there's any two things that are more unrelated, I'd say this has got to be it,'' he said. ''Although Microsoft has provided the wealth to do this I don't see the two things as being related in any way.'' [Copyright 1998, Reuters]