Recalling his recent trip to China, Bill Gates couldn't hide his excitement, and talked about the current cooperation with Chinese partners; Speaking about the Gates Foundation's newly released 2023 Goalkeeper Report, he said that he expects China to nurture better innovation to promote the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.
On June 14, Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, visited China for the first time after four years. A few days ago, he accepted a video interview with the first financial reporter and shared with the media for the first time the findings and insights of the China trip, among which the cooperation between the two sides in the field of health and agriculture impressed him the most. On September 12, the Gates Foundation released its seventh annual Target Defenders Report. This year's report focuses on maternal and child health and how to reduce maternal and child mortality globally through greater investment in innovation. Bill Gates said: "We want to work with our Chinese partners to explore how to produce higher quality [pharmaceutical] products at a lower cost that can be used by the world."
Bill Gates was interviewed by the first financial reporter
AI is expected to play a greater role in drug discovery
Bill Gates is a frequent visitor to China, visiting China almost every year or two since his first visit in 1994. At the beginning of the interview, he told the first financial reporter: "I am very happy to return to China again. Due to the pandemic, I haven't been here for a few years. During this visit, I met with a number of Gates Foundation partners, including government departments, grantees, and scientists. Bill Gates first mentioned the Center for Global Health Drug Discovery. He said that during his visit there, he interacted with the center's scientists, shared progress made over the past few years and explored potential areas of collaboration. For example, he said that in the field of tuberculosis prevention and control, China has set a good example for the world, and is still actively participating in the research and development of new drugs. Bill Gates continued: "I also visited Microsoft Research Asia in Beijing, which is right next to Tsinghua University. At the institute, I saw that researchers were working with the Center for Health Drug Discovery (CND) to use artificial intelligence (AI) to develop TB drugs to find cures for diseases with best-in-class technology. Xia Yan, head of the medicinal chemistry department of the Global Health Drug Discovery Center, said that the team in the center is currently using big data to do some virtual screening of drug emerging compounds. The screening of emerging compounds is an important part of modern drug discovery. Bill Gates wrote in March that he has been meeting regularly with OpenAI's team since 2016, that he believes AI is as revolutionary as mobile phones and the Internet, and that he hopes AI will play a bigger role in drug discovery, helping the public better understand health and nutrition, and discover better drugs and vaccines.
China's experience is very helpful to developing countries
According to this year's Goalkeeper Report, global maternal and child health has improved rapidly in the 21st century, but since 2015, progress has slowed and even worsened in some countries. At the current rate, the UN-set goal of reducing maternal mortality by 2030 may not be met. The report presents seven low-cost and easy-to-implement innovations, such as a single intravenous iron dose that can replenish women's iron stores during pregnancy and prevent and treat anaemia. The report estimates that if these innovations were widely deployed in low- and middle-income countries, 2 million lives could be saved globally by 2030 and 6.4 million by 2040. Bill Gates told Chinese media: "China's maternal mortality rate and child mortality rate have been reduced by 90% in the past generation, setting an example for the world." For a single intravenous iron injection, he said he would seek cooperation from Chinese partners to reduce its costs. Its current price in Europe is $50 a dose, but he is almost certain that with the right partners, it can be reduced to $15 or even $10 a dose, which is what the Gates Foundation is currently working on. In an interview last year, Bill Gates told First Financial Reporter: "China has great advantages in the fields of health and agriculture, which is very helpful for developing countries." During his trip to China, Bill Gates also took a lot of time to examine the work of malaria prevention and control, and said: "China has done a lot of useful work in developing malaria prevention and control tools. Although China has been certified as a malaria-free country by the World Health Organization, it has accumulated a lot of expertise in the process of achieving it, which is of great reference significance for other countries. He added, "China also has more research articles on malaria than any other country." These studies, along with China's generous assistance to the global malaria cause, are invaluable to us. ”
Cultivate high-quality seeds to alleviate poverty
Bill Gates also told the first financial reporter that he also visited many agricultural scientists during the trip, "We now need more high-quality seeds." He explained that in the context of climate change, first of all, China needs to grow more crops itself, use advanced technology to produce better seeds, cultivate better livestock genes, and then let these achievements benefit the world, especially poor farmers in Africa. In this context, the Gates Foundation and China also have room to further deepen cooperation. China has rich experience in rice cultivation and promotion, and China is the world's largest rice producer and consumer. China is also the first country in the world to successfully develop and promote hybrid rice, and is in an international leading position in the research of "high-yield, high-quality, multi-resistance" rice breeding. Nowadays, there are many Chinese scientists who are cultivating rice seeds adapted to the local climate environment for African countries, and researcher Liu Zaochang from the Shanghai Agricultural Biogenetics Center is one of them. He told the first financial reporter that the "water-saving and drought-resistant rice" (WDR)-73 cultivated by the Shanghai Agricultural Biogene Center will pass the examination and approval in the East African country of Uganda in 2022 and can begin large-scale planting.
Liu Zao, a water-saving and drought-resistant rice cultivated by the Shanghai Agricultural Biogene Center (photo by Qian Xiaoyan, a financial reporter), said that the results showed that WDR-73 can harvest 9.6 tons of rice per hectare, which is a significant increase from 6 tons of traditional rice in Uganda. He is optimistic that with the rollout of WDR-73 across Uganda and the increased motivation of local farmers to grow food, Uganda is expected to achieve rice self-sufficiency in the future. At the end of the interview, Bill Gates said, "I hope to come back to China soon." After leaving China this time, I went straight to Niger and Nigeria in Africa, where I saw huge demand. The whole trip reminded me that while we carry out scientific research, we must spread the results to these countries facing serious challenges as quickly as possible. ”
Editor-on-duty: Dragon King