Bill Gates Releases Mosquitoes to Underline Imperative of Investing in Public Health

During a presentation at the Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED) conference, according to Pulse2, Bill Gates opened a jar and let loose mosquitoes into the room, saying, "Not only poor people should experience this." (see the video below)

According to Wired, there were only seven mosquitoes released, and none of them carried malaria. I certainly oppose Microsoft’s persistently nefarious corporate behavior, and am wary of Gates for that reason, but this act of street theater sounds like it might really get people’s attention about the need for funds to stop malaria in a way that just giving a standard Impress (oops! this is Gates we’re talking about - I mean Powerpoint) presentation would never accomplish. Bill Gates gets in touch with his inner Abbie Hoffman, whodathunkit? Abbie Hoffman, who along with colleagues in 1967 showered dollar bills onto the New York Stock Exchange to expose the insanity of a system designed around a mad scramble after dollars, once said,

I tried to reach people. It was not acting. It was not some media muppet show. That is a cynical interpretation of history. […] Guerrilla theater is probably the oldest form of political commentary. The ideas just keep getting recycled. Showering money on Wall Street brokers was the TV-age version of driving the money changers from the temple.

It sounds almost more YES Men than Microsoft. Maybe leaving the day-to-day leadership of the corporate behemoth will be good for Gates. According to Doctors Without Borders, malaria kills 2 million people per year, 75% of them children. Despite the effectiveness of many interventions, including ACT therapies, bed nets, and potential vaccines, a looming threat is a shortage of a key component of one of the most effective drugs. Medecins Sans Frontieres reported on January 27, 2009,

Current best estimates, based on available stocks and current planting efforts, demonstrate that there will be a shortfall of about 40 tons of artesiminin starting material in 2010 to produce the expected 240 million treatments needed.1 Taking into account that it takes about 14 months from the planting of Artemisia annua to the availability of the finished product, the availability in 2010 depends on what is being planted by farmers in the next weeks and months. We believe that market forces will not resolve the short-term artemisinin supply problem.

According to Tido von Schoen-Angerer, MD, the Executive Director of the Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines, at Médecins Sans Frontières International, who wrote the letter above, only $9 million is needed to avert this disaster. Doctors without Borders is treating 1.2 million people with malaria, but wants to scale the program up to help many more people with the disease. Most malaria deaths are preventable with shockingly little public health money, as I and others have diaried about previously (please see "Help Save 9 Million Lives: Cost? Only 7% of Bailout"), and "Global Health Workers, the 'right to health' & Obama." When we can save so many lives with so little outlay, aren't we morally obligated to help? Perhaps Bill Gates' theatrical move can dramatize the risk of inaction in a way that will spur the rest of us to greater action. Update: The bigger picture problem is the $5 billion shortfall faced by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria. As Jeffrey Sachs observed, with appropriate passion,

This is absolutely in violation of the life and death pledge that the rich world has made. Now, we’re talking about a few billion dollars and millions of lives. Can we find that money in an economic crisis? Well, look at the “New York Times” front page today, reporting the Wall Street bonuses for this Christmas in the middle of this catastrophe of $18.4 billion. That’s $18.4 billion bonuses in an industry which lost $35 billion this year. Those bonuses are in no small way being paid out of the TARP bailout fund. Is the money there? Yes, the money’s there. If we would open our eyes to the reality of broken promises and unbelievably egregious practices, we could easily channel money that is now going into these enterprises and right into private pockets. Into the mouths and therefore the lifesaving interventions for millions of people. Last week it was revealed that Merrill Lynch, in a quarter in which they lost $20 billion, had taken $4 billion of bonuses. Well, that’s enough to close the U.S. contribution that’s missing right now from the Global Fund. So, I would suggest that the administration reclaim those bonuses which absolutely are not only unjustified, but completely unconscionable and put the money into the Global Fund immediately. There is no shortage of funds at a moment when in 3 months the rich world has found about $3 trillion of funding for bank bailouts and in which there have been $18 billion of Christmas bonuses for Wall Street supported by bailout legislation. I hope that nobody could think that these could for one moment balance the lives that are stake. It couldn’t be more clear, This is the most successful institution that we have in the world for addressing the most horrific epidemics that the world faces. We have explicit policy pledges, we have validated national plans. We have a clear commitment that all valid plans will be fully funded. We’ve already broken that pledge to the world’s poorest people. We’re delaying programs. We have a massive gap, and it is the responsibility of world leaders to face up to this and I’ve suggested at least one area where they could make up all of the difference in very short order.

(This is an expanded version (with the video and additional info added) of an editorial I wrote for Peacework for the March 2009 issue, which focused on Universal Healthcare.)