Los Angeles:
Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates has warned that the planet should prepare for the next pandemic as it would for war, which includes the investment of tens of billions of dollars each and every year, in a letter released Wednesday.
“We can’t afford to be caught flat-footed again,” wrote the Microsoft co-founder and his wife Melinda in an annual missive.
“The threat of the next pandemic will always be hanging over our heads — unless the world takes steps to prevent it.”
To stay away from future destruction on the scale of that brought on by Covid-19, “pandemic preparedness must be taken as seriously as we take the threat of war,” Gates mentioned.
“Stopping the next pandemic will require spending tens of billions of dollars per year — a big investment, but remember that the COVID-19 pandemic is estimated to cost the world $28 trillion,” he added.
“The world needs to spend billions to save trillions (and prevent millions of deaths).”
The American, ranked the third-wealthiest particular person in the planet by Forbes, urged wealthy nations to provide the bulk of the investment, pointing out that their governments stand to advantage most.
Investments in future diagnostic and vaccination technologies should really be supplemented by “a global alert system, which we don’t have at large scale today,” enabling epidemics to be detected and responded to early, the letter mentioned.
Gates famously sounded the alarm about the danger of worldwide pandemics at a 2015 TED conference.
He now advocates the creation of a group of about 3,000 completely educated, expert pandemic “firefighters” out there on permanent alert.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has currently invested $1.75 billion to fight the coronavirus pandemic, as nicely as advertising and funding inoculation projects in creating nations.
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