Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder and philanthropist, is to make the largest ever single charitable donation with a pledge of $10 billion (£6 billion) for vaccine work over the next decade.Mr Gates said that he hoped the coming ten years would be the “decade of the vaccine” to reduce dramatically child mortality in the world’s poorest countries. It is calculated that his pledge could save more than 8 million lives.
Mr Gates and his wife, Melinda, made their announcement at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting at Davos, Switzerland, where they were joined by Julian Lob-Levyt, the head of the vaccine consortium, the GAVI Alliance.
