IT Minister KT Rama Rao interacts with Bill Gates virtually during the ongoing BioAsia summit in Hyderabad on Thursday
By Express News Service
HYDERABAD: Bill Gates, co-chair of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and co-founder of Microsoft, on Thursday lauded the Indian partners for developing and deploying the vaccines and said that health will be one of the most high-growth areas in the future.“India did two things that stand out — creating great vaccines with global partners, including the Gates Foundation and getting those vaccines out. India’s vaccine coverage is very impressive, which is even better than most rich countries. That’s quite phenomenal”, he commented.
During a fireside chat with IT & Industries Minister KT Rama Rao, Gates imparted his learnings from the pandemic-stricken years, enunciating the importance of building new capacities for equitable health with contemporary tools to ensure that the world is prepared if a new pandemic strikes.He spoke on using the new platforms like the mRNA and building up the capacity in India as a reserve for future pandemics. This will also augment efforts in preparing vaccines for some of the most difficult diseases like HIV, tuberculosis and malaria, he said.
When Rama Rao referred to his prediction of a pandemic back in 2015, Gates commented on the next big potential crisis. “It is likely to be a respiratory virus, with all the human travel we now have, that’s the one that can spread in such a rapid way,” he said.Gates emphasized that there is a need for the world to spend more on R&D and infectious disease. “Infectious disease is quite modest when compared to cancer or a heart or neurological disease, and yet this pandemic is a reminder that we have to do a better job on those too.” Addressing Rama Rao’s observation of Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) being a sustainable development problem, Gates said: “The international health metrics estimate 1.3 million deaths attributed to this microbial resistance. We see AMR for pneumonia, typhoid, and for women who are delivering, which is an incredible tragedy.”
In a rapid fire session, Rama Rao asked Gates what is the next big cure he is looking at?
Gates said: “I still look at the HIV cure to be at the top of the list. Although I would say that malnutrition is still a huge problem. It’s really the microbiome that we didn’t understand at all ten years ago — changing what people eat, getting that microbiome to be adapted so that we don’t have any malnutrition. That’s the one that I do think will, in the next ten years, have some breakthroughs and we can improve lives.”