Sally Stansfield of the Bill & Melinda Gates Fund is talking about how technology can be used to improve health globally.

It’s been 50 years since the development of the polio vaccine but it’s still a threat in much of the world. A child born in the developing world has a 1:6 of dying before age 5. More than 800,000 kids die from measles every year. 25% of the world’s kids are moderately or severely malnourished. Less than half of people at risk of AIDS can’t get condoms.

Health is a public good gone global, which means that governments, with their concern for national goods, can’t deliver it.

The free market is not developing drugs for the developing world. And there’s no economic incentive to develop vaccines that do not require refrigeration.

The World Health Organization has committed to deliver 3M anti-retro-virals (42M people are living with AIDS). But we send them back into their communities where they can infect more people because the community has no access to AIDS prevention techologies. Sally says no one is looking into the effect of this. She sees WHO’s program as something that makes us feel better about ourselves.

The private sector is stepping up to the plate. Merck has made a new commitment to provide the anti-River blindness drug. Glaxxo SmithKline has agreed to produce the anti-elephantiasis drug. They’re putting millions into programs to make these things happen. But private citizens and organizations are required to solve the problems.

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