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We are inspired by the progress that has been made with vaccines.
And when you immunize children against preventable diseases, you save lives.
Last year, when Bill and Melinda were at Davos, they announced the Decade of
Vaccines, and that was a call to action for all of us to continue our cooperation,
our collaboration, private sector, public sector in order to make sure that we
continue to improve global health and especially for children.
In the Western world, in the rich world, our children have access to life-saving vaccines.
And at the Gates Foundation, what we want to do is we want to make sure that children
in poor countries have access to those vaccines.
A great example of success is what we are seeing happening with polio.
Polio has been reduced by 99 percent in the past two decades, and we've seen
tremendous progress just from the last 12 months in key challenging areas of polio
in India and Nigeria.
And we know that this is a winnable fight, that the world can come together
and eradicate polio, and that is a smart investment as well as the right thing to do.
The projected benefits of eradicating polio range from $40 to $50 billion or more.
If you look at some of the other vaccines that are available, you see that they are
saving the lives of two and a half million children per year.
That's inspiring progress, but we know that more is possible.
Today, we are vaccinating children against hepatitis, polio, and tetanus,
but we see now that we have the opportunity to take new vaccines that prevent pneumonia
and diarrhea and get them available in the developing world, and those diseases,
pneumonia and diarrhea, are the leading killers of children in the world.
Now, we've seen great progress with vaccines over a long period of time.
In 1960, there were 20 million deaths of children under five.
Today, we are down to less than eight million, and that's because of the success of
of vaccines, and there is more that is possible.
And that's going to come from great cooperation and collaboration of private sector,
public sector working together.
That's what's been driving this success in global health.
And it comes back to my key thought, that when you improve health,
you improve life by every measure. And that is a value that we all share
so we've got to continue these investments in global health.