Bill Gates Wants To Eradicate Malaria And TB Rather Than Join The Space Race

Bill Gates says he won't be following along with his pals like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos or Richard Branson in going into space.

2021 has been a big year for space exploration as the SpaceX, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic bosses competed to get their commercial empires to break through the atmosphere.

They were all successful and it could be the next frontier for tourism that sees wealthy customers get a few minutes in space to observe our planet.

Despite having the cash to be able to rival his competitors, Bill Gates says there are more pressing issues on Earth.

Speaking to CNN, the Microsoft co-founder said: "The space race, a lot of that is a commercial market.

"Having great internet connections throughout Africa is a good thing. Using observation satellites to see what's going on with agriculture and climate change.

"So that's not philanthropically motivated altogether. I do hope that people who are rich will find ways to give their wealth back to society with high impact.

"Clearly, they've got skills. They can't, or shouldn't, want to consume it all themselves.

"Until we can get rid of malaria and tuberculosis, and all these diseases that are so terrible in poor countries, that's going to be my total focus.

He's setting himself a pretty sizeable goal for 2022 and that's to eradicate polio from the face of the planet.

There have been some enormous strides taken to rid the Earth of the devastating disease over the past few decades, however it still lingers in parts of the world.

Gates wants to be the person that put the final nail in the coffin of polio.

"That's a big, important cause to me. So, if Afghanistan can stay stable, it looks like we'll finally get wild polio down to zero. And we've been working on that for over 20 years," he explained.

He's called on his wealthy friends to look inward rather than into the cosmos for ways they can spend their billions.

Bill revealed there are loads of projects set up to get rid of diseases however there isn't enough funding because things like space travel is much sexier.

"We really need to invest in the health of Africa, so children survive, so they have good nutrition and that's the future, so they can be well educated and lift up the continent," he said.

"So we're always going out and saying we want more governments and philanthropists to get involved."

Featured Image Credit: Alamy

Topics: News, space, bill gates

Stewart Perrie

Stewart Perrie is a Trending Journalist at LADbible. His first job was as a newsreader and journalist at the award winning Sydney radio station, Macquarie Radio. He was solely responsible for the content broadcast on multiple stations across Australia when the MH17, Germanwings and AirAsia disasters unfolded. Stewart has covered the conflict in Syria for LADbible, interviewing a doctor on the front line, and has contributed to the hugely successful UOKM8 campaign.

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