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Good evening.
And welcome to Q&A and the Sir John Clancy Auditorium
at the University of New South Wales.
I'm Tony Jones.
Answering your questions tonight,
the co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Bill Gates.
Please welcome our guest.
What would be the most ambitious program then,
because getting rid of the polio vaccine by 2018
is a pretty huge task?
Yeah, eradicating polio,
I think we have very strong odds of succeeding on that.
We're down to three countries.
We’ve had very successful fundraising over the last several months
and it's 5.5 billion,
but we're using new tactics.
We've looked where it’s been challenging
and we have less than 300 cases and only three countries
so I’d rate our odds as pretty good.
We've got a question in the audience on this topic
from Gillian Thomas.
Mr Gates, polio survivors needs special services
because of post-polio syndrome and polio's late effects.
Countries rarely provide these services and survivors are ignored.
In Australia, most of the 400,000 polio survivors
are excluded from our new National Disability Insurance Scheme
and Polio Australia is without government funding.
No-one will celebrate polio's eradication more than polio survivors;
however, even after eradication
there will still be millions of survivors worldwide
requiring polio services for up to 80 years.
What strategies will get governments to shoulder their responsibility
and fund essential post-polio services?
Well, you're absolutely right that polio syndrome,
challenges and all sorts of disabilities are very important issues.
And particularly in these very poor countries,
they are not given a lot of attention.
I knew when I held a girl named Hoshman,
who was only 2 years old in India
who didn't really understand what it meant for her life
that she was paralysed,
that the likelihood of her having the full life that she deserved
was not very good.
Hopefully we can use this polio success to raise the visibility
of the fact that there’s still people out there who need help
but first and foremost
we want to make sure that no one else has to go through that
and that's where we're very close,
and it will free up a lot of money for other health activities.
Gillian, can I just come back to you for your response to that?
I mean I understand you are a polio survivor yourself
and I must say I'm quite shocked to hear
that you're not covered by the Disability Care Scheme.
No, unfortunately it is the age 65 cut-off that is going to exclude us
because the polio vaccines came out about getting on for 65 years ago
and I got polio five years too soon, unfortunately.
Is there a way of dealing with this issue?
I mean, could you use the money you save once you eradicate the disease
I think you're talking about billions of dollars in savings.
Could that be used to help the survivors who are living on?
Yeah. Well, certainly, you know,
the health funds are fungible
and so every country will look at what they're doing on disability
and other things and, you know,
hopefully it keeps polio in the forefront.
Can you tell us how you and Melinda
decided to give so much away to folks outside of your family
and why do it in your lifetimes
and not in your last will and testament?
Well, Chuck Feeney, who you mentioned,
is one of the great philanthropists of the age
and I encourage everybody to look at his example.
He has pretty given away 99% of his money to phenomenal things,
and it's really a great example
that both Melinda and I have learned from.
You know, when you're lucky enough to have substantial wealth,
what are the possibilities? You can build a pyramid.
You can have, you know, 400 people fan you.
There’s kind of a limit to consumption
and so then you have to say,what do you feel?
What are you affiliated to? What really counts for you?
If you feel like you're a citizen of the world
and you want to help all of humanity,
then you think, ‘Where is the greatest injustice?’
And I think a mother having to bury a child
or having that child have so much sickness
that their brain never develops so they can't learn,
they can't contribute in any way, you know,
that was a tragedy that Melinda and I decided to learn about
and see were there some miracle interventions,
sort of the equivalent of the micro processor, personal computer,
that could be created.
And so in doing that we fund scientists all over the world.
Mr Gates, some of the world's poorest countries
are run by corrupt and often totalitarian leaders.
How do you manage to support the people
without supporting the governments?
Well, we believe that vaccinations should take place in every country.
No matter what you think of the leader in that country,
the children in that country deserve vaccines.
So we've even been involved in helping get vaccines into North Korea
which, you know, it is a contest,
but you might think of that
as the worst political leadership in the world today.
Not many would compete with that.
And so we're involved in all countries.
Somalia, where there is no government,
Eritrea, where the government is imperfect.
You name it, we're in there trying to get vaccines out to the children.
And places where the workers themselves have been in danger,
if not some of them killed.
Well, yeah, it’s very tragic
that even in the case of polio in the last six months,
the workers have been targeted,
both in Pakistan and in Nigeria, and killed.
Now, the workers have chosen to keep volunteering.
New security things have been put in place.
You know, the government has really taken some very good steps but, you know,
those are real heroes that go out and get vaccines to children
even in the face of threats against their life.
Is there a particular issue with Islamist extremism in North Africa, which is becoming
and Pakistan, obviously, which is becoming a lot worse?
Well, there is a group in Nigeria called Boko Haram
and what they think about this isn’t totally clear.
In the case of Pakistan and Afghanistan,
we’ve actually had good luck
where a lot of the Taliban groups have given
so called letters of passage,
where they say vaccinators can come in.
They need to be convinced
that it's not a plot by the US Government
and, you know, there were some things that confused
that in terms of vaccination activities
and so maintaining that fragile trust
that these people are there to help your kids
and that's all they're going to do,
it's never very easy,
but it's actually looking pretty good right now
in Afghanistan and Pakistan
That's all we have time for.
Please thank our guest, Bill Gates.
Editado, traduzido e legendado por END POLIO NOW Santa Catarina