Health more important than tech: Gates

NEW DELHI: Software baron Bill Gates, whose personal wealth of around $50

billion makes him the world's richest man, said on Thursday that technology was

not as important to him as health.

The chairman of Microsoft Corp, on a one-day visit to India, told Reuters in

a telephone interview that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was focused on

health, which receives 60 per cent of its annual grants of $1 billion.

"You can't find the cause that is as...important as that (health),"

Gates, whose company makes the ubiquitous Windows software.

"Thirty per cent of the foundation goes to education, learning and

access to technology. That is an interesting area for me and one that's quite

important but it is number two after the health area."

The foundation run by Gates, who is on a visit to expand his company's

Internet strategy, announced two grants for health and learning in India,

totalling $30 million.

Gates visited a clinic and offered oral polio vaccines to 25 children who

came with their mothers in their best clothes to greet him.

Asked if he was moved by such situations or whether he dealt with the

humanitarian side of his work with the aggression that has characterized his

approach to business, Gates said it was a bit of both.

"Ha ha. I hope, hopefully at times it's each," he replied.

"At times I talk to doctors...trying to apply my thinking to try and

help out. But when I see the kids and I see the mothers I think of myself as a

father and how important it is to me to have my children be healthy. So it's

very touching."

World doing too little to save lives



The Gates Foundation announced a $25 million grant to help the government of the
southern state of Andhra Pradesh with a comprehensive immunization program.

The other grant, for $5 million, will go to the Gandhi Institute of Computer

Education to aid computer training for around 50,000 underprivileged students a

year.

Microsoft set up its first full-fledged software development center outside

of its home base in Seattle in Hyderabad, capital of Andhra Pradesh, the

beneficiary of his health grant.

India, once home to almost half of the remaining polio cases, has made strong

progress with an aggressive campaign for vaccination, but the disease is still

endemic in parts of the country.

Some 115 countries have been free of polio for more than a year, and the

World Health Organisation is leading efforts to make the world polio-free by

2005. Worldwide, 7,000 cases were reported in 1999, down from 350,000 in 1988.

"You know, this cause is so amazing that you can save lives. So what

else counts in that context?" Gates said.

"The world at large has not done a good job in putting its resources in

aiding the millions of lives at stake," he said.

"I don't see any day in the perceivable future where the challenge of

health or the challenges of access to latest technology would be solved. So I'll

stay focused in the foundation... primarily on the two priorities," he

said.

Asked if he measured the performance of his foundation as he would his

company, Gates said it was "all from the heart".

"In each program we have goals and we have experts to look at the

goals," he said. "But the whole reason for doing that is more a pure

humanitarian thing."

(C) Reuters Limited 2000.