| China, the 1st stop for Bill Gates after retirement this summer | |
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| Jun 28, 2008 20:36 |   |
 | China one of first stops for Gates in new philanthropy job By Kristi Heim Seattle Times business reporter When Bill Gates takes on the role of full-time philanthropist this summer, one of the first places he's headed is China. That's where the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will move forward on several key health programs, including HIV/AIDS prevention and a new push to curb smoking — and try to tap China's expertise to improve African agriculture. Gates discussed the new China initiatives in an interview as the Microsoft chairman this week leaves day-to-day work at the company he co-founded 33 years ago and looks ahead to the global work of the Gates Foundation. China might seem like an unlikely destination for Gates and the foundation, considering the wealth that China's economic boom has generated in recent years. While the country has impoverished regions with disease epidemics, it also has expertise that could help poorer countries improve areas such as agricultural production, said Gates. "China is kind of interesting, because ... it's a recipient [of assistance], but in a lot of ways it's a participant in the things that need to get done," Gates said. "They have capabilities that, now that they've improved their economy a lot, they can be a factor to help poorer countries." It's also a nation of smokers. The Gates Foundation is launching a new program to help the country cut tobacco use. China has nearly 30 percent of the world's smokers, according to the World Health Organization. Almost 60 percent of men in China smoke, and more than a million people a year die from smoking-linked illnesses. |
| Jun 28, 2008 20:37 | #1 |
| Beijing has pledged a "smoke-free Olympics," banning smoking from most indoor public spaces, workplaces and spectator areas of open-air stadiums during the summer games in August. But sharing cigarettes is entrenched in the culture. "It will be interesting to see on tobacco how much they cooperate on that," Gates said. "The U.S. was at a much, much higher level of wealth before it did anything about tobacco, so China has a chance to act well before the equivalent time that the U.S. did." Gates can observe the results himself. He said he plans to attend the Olympics. The Gates Foundation is also making grants for hepatitis B vaccination in China, where the disease affects about 10 percent of the population. And in agriculture, the foundation is developing programs to take expertise from China to Africa to help raise crop yields. The world's two leading centers for rice research are in the Philippines and China. The Gates Foundation is working with Asian rice researchers to focus on the needs of Africa for more varieties of rice and traits like drought resistance. "In some cases they've just cooperated with us without us funding any activity," Gates said. "In some cases, we fund them to pay particular attention to the problems in the case of that crop out of Africa." To begin tackling the HIV/AIDS problem in China, the Gates Foundation opened an office in Beijing last year and hired Ray Yip, a former China director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, to head the program. It has committed an initial $50 million for the effort. China's government is wary of foreign nonprofit organizations working on sensitive issues. Many nongovernmental organizations are mistrusted, and the country's top AIDS activists are routinely put under house arrest. |
| Jun 28, 2008 20:39 | #2 |
| Gates said the foundation worked closely with the China's Health Ministry on its programs. "On some, like the AIDS thing, they were very welcoming, and it's good collaboration," he said. "It will vary by topic how much you get government cooperation on those things." Peter Piot, executive director of the UNAIDS, a joint United Nations program, said the Gates Foundation is making the right choice to intervene early. "One of the lessons of the AIDS epidemic has been anything can happen," he said. "With the incredible transformation of China as a country, as a society — changes in sexual behavior, rampant prostitution in many places. ... We have epidemics in men who have sex with men in about every Chinese city we've looked at." In Africa, many of the countries where the epidemic is worse by proportion are small nations. Botswana, with one of the highest HIV rates in the world, has a population of only 1.6 million people. That's not the case in China. "Just imagine if we waited until 1 percent of China is infected with HIV," Gates said. "That's 1 percent of 1.3 billion people — that's 13 million." "I think it's money well spent," he said. "It's very well targeted to where the epidemic is today." |
| Jun 28, 2008 21:03 | #3 |
| in deep Southern China-, there is a certain number of HIV infections...Here is the article '96 titled from freedom to fear.. From Freedom To Fear: When Aids Hits China NEWSWEEK Apr 1, 1996 Issue BEIJINGChina Compared with many of its neighbors, China has hardly felt the AIDS pandemic. As of last fall, the government had recorded only 80 AIDS cases and 2,600 HIV infections among the country's 1.2 billion people. Even if the true number of infections is closer to 100,000, as health officials suspect, that's a tiny fraction of Thailand's estimated 1 million or India's 4 million. But economic growth, dizzying social change and an unstable blood supply are conspiring to create unprecedented hazards for the world's most populous nation. "If protective measures are not taken in time," a 1993 government report concluded, "the Chinese nation will suffer a disastrous assault and irredeemable losses." |
| Jun 28, 2008 21:03 | #4 |
| The assault is advancing on several fronts. So far, the greatest losses have occurred in the southern Yunnan province, where HIV has followed heroin across the borders from Burma, Laos and Thailand. The first victims were drug users, who contracted the virus through needle-sharing. Now heterosexual contact is spreading HIV through Yunnan's ethnic communities. Meanwhile, free markets and open borders have brought AIDS to China's burgeoning coastal cities. In the island province of Hainan, where prostitutes crowd the palm-lined streets, the reported incidence of sexually transmitted diseases rose more than 170-fold between 1984 and 1994. In the past, what was dangerous in Hainan might have been safer in Shanghai. But as China grows more mobile, regional problems become national ones. In recent years, an estimated 120 million peasants have fled rural villages to seek work in the cities and on the roads. And as Africa's experience makes clear, rootlessness is itself a risk factor for AIDS. Unskilled migrants sustain the sex trade, both as buyers and sellers. Their venereal infections go untreated, leaving them doubly vulnerable to HIV. And those with the virus continue to support themselves, whether by selling sex or by selling blood. |
| Jun 28, 2008 21:04 | #5 |
| Health experts worry more about sex than they do about blood, if only because love-making is more common than any hospital procedure. But no one denies that China's blood supply is a hazard. Penniless migrants can earn up to $50--the equivalent of a month's factory wages--for a 200-ml donation. And as the recent tragedy near Beijing suggests, the standards for screening and sterilization are at best sporadic. |
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