Bill Gates discusses Pakistan’s polio eradication, COVID-19 efforts in maiden visit – CNBCTV18

Microsoft founder and billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates visited Pakistan on Thursday for the first time to step up efforts to eradicate polio from the country. Pakistan is said to be one of the two remaining countries in the world where the poliovirus is still endemic, the only other nation being neighbouring Afghanistan.

Gate was conferred the Hilal-e-Pakistan, the second-highest civilian honour in the country, at an investiture ceremony for his efforts to help eradicate polio, Samaa TV reported.

“We’re not done but we’re certainly in by far the best situation we’ve ever been in,” Reuters quoted Gates as saying on the possibility of eradicating polio in Pakistan.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which the billionaire co-chairs, is part of the major inter-governmental project called the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI).

Gates said polio eradication efforts in the two neighbouring countries were interlinked. Though there was a possibility of eliminating the virus in practice in the next few years, there is no certainty about the outcome given the situation in Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover in August 2021. However, he said vaccination rates in Afghanistan had gone up in 2022 after dropping since 2018.

“I think the steps taken in Pakistan during 2022 will probably set us up to finish polio eradication,” Gates said.

The philanthropist met Prime Minister Imran Khan and was also briefed about the country’s efforts to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic. PM Khan hosted a luncheon in honour of the tech billionaire.

Gates visited the National Command and Control Centre (NCOC), the top anti-COVID-19 body in the country, during his day-long tour and was briefed about the country’s effort to curb the spread of the virus.

An NCOC statement said the Microsoft co-founder appreciated Pakistan’s efforts against COVID-19 despite resource constraints.

Khan and Gates are said to have maintained relations in the past few years with the Pak PM urging the philanthropist to consider providing humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan last year, PTI reported. They had discussed COVID-19 response, polio eradication and climate change in April 2021 over telephone.

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