Bill Gates Donates $25m to Fight Polio in Nigeria

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Gates, who arrived Nigeria last week for a personal assessment of the havoc the diseases had caused in the country yesterday in Abuja promised to commit over $25 million dollars to purchase more than100 million oral polio vaccine for Nigeria.

Gates said polio eradication was his pet project and promised to work with the World Health Organisation (WHO), World Bank, UNICEF and Rotary International for necessary collaboration so that the disease could be eradicated in the few other countries where they still exist.

Gates, who is a Co-chairman of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, accused the leadership of the country of not doing enough to ensure that the disease is completely eradicated, noting that countries like United States of America (USA) Britain and part of Asia were no longer battling with the disease.

He met with some governors in Abuja yesterday where he sought to know some of the efforts they were making to fight the disease and urged them to monitor the application of vaccines in both the states and the local government councils in a bid to ensure that the vaccination was more regular.

In a communiqué at the end of the governors' meeting with Gate, the chairman of the governors' Forum, Dr. Bukola Saraki of Kwara State, said the governors had assured Gate of their desire to take over the monitoring of the application of vaccine from their wives, to ensure that the polio war was fought to a logical conclusion.

Gate who was in Sokoto State last week as part of his tour of Northern part of the country said he was impressed with the level of commitment shown towards the eradication of the disease and promised that his foundation will stop at nothing to ensure that in the next two years no country will fight the polio war.