Bill Gates visits PM Modi amid 3-day-review of his foundation's work in India

As Billionaire philanthropist and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is on a three-day visit to India to review the work of his foundation in the country, he has met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday. In the last decade, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been working in areas of health-care, sanitation, agriculture and financial services for the underprivileged people in India. The foundation's partnerships with Indian manufacturers have led to development of affordable efficacious vaccines which has enabled different countries to introduce these vaccines, said an official of the foundation.

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Bill Gates meets Nitish Kumar

Earlier on Sunday,  Bill Gates praised the Bihar government's progress in fighting poverty and disease in the last 20 years. He said only a few places have been able to surpass the achievements made by the state. He also met Chief Minister of Bihar Nitish Kumar in Patna.

"Over the past 20 years, few places have made more progress against poverty and disease than Bihar. Compared to her mother born two decades ago, a child born today in Bihar is twice more likely to reach her fifth birthday," a press release quoted Bill Gates as saying. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is committed to working with the state government to ensure health and education for all children, the statement said. Commenting on the interaction, Kumar expressed happiness with the collaboration as it would help improve public health services. The discussion also focused on giving priorities to structural reforms in the health sector with a need to strengthen primary health care by building a robust, resilient and responsive health system in Bihar, the statement said.

"We are pleased with our collaboration with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to improve public health services, community level behaviour change, scaling up innovation across health, nutrition and agriculture. Bihar is keen to continue partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to further strengthen sustainable systems across departments like health, social welfare, agriculture, empowerment of women and rural development," the chief minister said.

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Bill Gates to PTI

In an exclusive interview to PTI on Sunday, billionaire philanthropist and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said that India has the potential for "very rapid" economic growth over the next decade which will lift people out of poverty and allow the government to invest in health and education priorities in an "exciting way". Gates, the world's richest person, specifically complimented India's Aadhaar identity system and the country's performance in the financial services and pharma sectors.

The positive outlook by Gates for the Indian economy, Asia's third-largest, comes at a time when it is reeling under major slowdown amid apprehensions that the cycle may last for a longer period.  On Friday, 64-year-old Gates, with a net worth of USD 110 billion, regained the position of the world's richest person surpassing the Amazon Inc's Jeff Bezos. The Microsoft co-founder has so far donated over USD 35 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for poverty reduction and social development programmes in various countries.

Gates also hailed India's Aadhaar identification system as well as adoption of the UPI system. "Well, in all of our areas, India's been a key place where we find innovators and financial services. It's fantastic the way that the Aadhaar identity system and the overall UPI system is gaining adoption, and there's some great lessons out of that work," he said. "We partner with people like Nandan Nilekani to think, okay, how do the lessons from India apply to other countries for things like digital identity or financial services," he said.

Gates also complimented India's pioneering work in vaccine manufacturing, saying the country has made impactful contribution in improving peoples' lives."When people think of India, they think of the IT services and the great work done there. Less visible but certainly very impactful for improving the human condition is the great work done by the vaccine manufacturers, whether it's Serum, who's the largest, but a dozen others - Bharat Biotech, Bio-E, a number of companies," he said.

(inputs from PTI)

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