NAIROBI (Reuters) - Nigeria could cut the
number of polio cases to zero next year and be declared free of the
disease in 2018 even though a national eradication campaign has had to
contend with an insurgency in the north, Bill Gates told Reuters.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation supports the global initiative
to wipe out polio, which includes a campaign in Nigeria, one of
three nations where the crippling virus is still endemic. The other
two are Pakistan and Afghanistan.
"We have got all the challenges up in northern Nigeria, the violence
from Boko Haram, and the distraction of an upcoming election," Gates
said in a telephone interview, referring to an Islamist rebel group
that has in the past targeted vaccination workers, and to Nigeria's
national vote next year.
"Despite all that, we’ve got by far the lowest numbers of cases
ever," he said. “We hope by the end of next year we’d be at zero."
He added that if there were no more cases for three years after
that, Nigeria could be certified clear in 2018.
The technology billionaire-turned-global philanthropist was speaking
last week before a speech on Thursday at Addis Ababa University on
development in Africa, mainly in health and agriculture.
“We’ve got a pretty optimistic view of what can happen in Africa in
those two areas,” he said before his trip to Ethiopia, a nation
stricken by famine 30 years ago but which has doubled farm output in
the last eight years.
In health work, one of his most high-profile programs is the fight
against malaria, the mosquito-borne disease that infects more than
200 million people a year and kills more than 600,000 people. Nine
out of 10 deaths are in Africa.
The campaign includes promoting bed nets, protecting homes with
insecticide sprays and using the artemisinin drug in treatment to
bring down fatalities, he said.
"On the negative side, we have artemisinin resistance emerging in
southeast Asia, and that can take away the very best drug tool we
have right now," he said, adding that there were efforts to contain
that problem from spreading.
NEXT GENERATION
British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline is seeking regulatory approval for
the world's first vaccine, known as RTS,S, which has been supported
by Gates and which he said would help in the battle although it was
only "partially effective."
"We are investing in other malarial vaccines but just given the
complexity and time for doing trials we won’t have a
second-generation vaccine for like four or five years," he said.
In agriculture, his foundation is the primary backer of the
eight-year-old Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, which
supports smallholder farmers with projects ranging from improving
seed varieties to increasing soil fertility.
Productivity in Africa per hectare where most farmers till small
plots is only about a fifth that of the United States and Europe,
where farms are far bigger and better equipped.
Global research has often focused on improving rice, wheat and
maize, while popular African staples like sorghum, cassava and
millet have received less attention, Gates said, adding that his
foundation was seeking to redress some of that imbalance.
Bringing down fertilizer prices, better understanding of soils and
improving credit systems were vital to boosting output in Africa,
while making sure knowledge and expertise reached smallholders in
far-flung places was also valuable, he said.
The Digital Green project, which is supported by the foundation,
aimed to help exchange knowledge between smallholder farmers via
video clips that could be watched on smartphones. In Africa, the
program runs in Ethiopia, Ghana and Tanzania.
Gates said this encouraged better adoption of new practices because
farmers were listening "to somebody speaking local dialect and
working on the same problem they are."
The man behind Microsoft said he was also backing "old school"
projects using radio to spread better techniques. That project
operates in Mali, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda
and Malawi.
While expertise extension programs were proving effective in
countries like Ethiopia, he said: "There are lot of countries in
Africa where the extension system is hardly working at all, and
there we work with the government to improve that."
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation supports the global initiative
to wipe out polio, which includes a campaign in Nigeria, one of
three nations where the crippling virus is still endemic. The other
two are Pakistan and Afghanistan.
