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In Different Places You Run Into Myths Around Vaccination Or Around Family Planning. In The United States, One Of The Myths That Existed For A Long Time, That Has Been Completely Debunked, Was That Autism Was Linked To A Vaccine.

-Melinda Gates

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In Different Places You

Melinda Gates

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In Different Places You Run Into Myths Around Vaccination Or Around Family Planning. In The United States, One Of The Myths That Existed For A Long Time, That Has Been Completely Debunked, Was That Autism Was Linked To A Vaccine.

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We Start With An Economic Approach. We Look At What Are The Greatest Causes Of Death In The Developing World, And What Causes The Largest Amount Of Disability, Which Would Prevent You From Getting A Job. A Lot Of Those Deaths Start With Diseases, Diseases We Don't Get In Such A Great Number In The United States.

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Despite The Debunking, You Have A Small Group In The Last Five Years That Hasn't Wanted To Vaccinate Their Children, For Instance, For Measles. Then, All Of Sudden, We Got An Outbreak Of Measles And Kids Were Starting To Die From Measles.

Women And Girls Face A Whole Host Of Issues. We Start With Health, So We Work Very Deeply On Maternal Deaths, Making Sure That A Mom Doesn't Die In Childbirth, Making Sure That She Has Access, For Instance, To Aids Medication.

Like In Africa, If Somebody Doesn't Have Fuel, They're Still Going And Collecting Firewood. If They Get An Oven, That's A Huge Difference. You Can Do Things To Reduce The Inequities By Making Sure That They Can Get Clean Energy, Safe Energy. To Make Sure They're Not Having To Collect Water Every Day. That's Huge For Women In The Developing World.

Bill And I Both Firmly Believe That Even The Most Difficult Global Health Problems Can Be Solved.

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It's Really One Of My All-time Favorite Things To Do. To Go Out And Really See The Kids And Visit The Moms Who Are In These Programs Because I Think I Really Get To See What Happens On The Ground And Connect With Them About What Changes Are That Happen In Their Lives Because Of Some Of The Giving That We're Able To Do.

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Abortion Has Become A Very Politicised Issue That I Think Countries Have To Work Out Themselves. In A Lot Of Countries, People Can't Even Yet Agree On What Their Laws Should Be.

I've Travelled Extensively In The Last 16 Years - To Slums In Bangladesh, To Townships In South Africa, To All Kinds Of Places In India, Etc. When I Would Go And Talk To Villagers About Something Like Vaccines, If I Stayed Long Enough, The Women Would Bring The Conversation Around And Say: "what About This Family Planning Tool? We Can't Keep Having The Number Of Children We're Having."

If I Really Believe All Lives Have Equal Value, And If I Use Contraceptives, Which I Do, And If I'm Counselling My Son And My Two Daughters To Use Them, How Am I Not Serving The Women Who Don't Have Access To The Contraceptives They Need?

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Think, For A Moment, About Our Educational Ladder. We've Strengthened The Steps Lifting Students From Elementary School To Junior High, And Those From Junior High To High School. But, That Critical Step Taking Students From High School Into Adulthood Is Badly Broken. And It Can No Longer Support The Weight It Must Bear.

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If We're Going To Make Progress On This Issue [of Contraception], We Have To Be Really Clear About What Our Agenda Is. We're Not Talking About Abortion. We're Not Talking About Population Control. What I'm Talking About Is Giving Women The Power To Save Their Lives, To Save Their Children's Lives And To Give Their Families The Best Possible Future.

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Now We Just Really Need To Do The Work, Which We're Doing, To Get Contraceptives Out To Women Worldwide.

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We Have To Look At It Country By Country. In Places Like The Developing World Where, As You Say, In Mumbai, It's About Five Hours' Gap Between What A Woman Does And A Man Does. You Have To Start By Recognizing The Problem And Talking About It, Trying To Change Those Roles.

All Of A Sudden People In The United States Start To Realize That Vaccines Make A Difference. The Controversy And The Myth That's There, We're Always Trying To Bust Through That. So When I See A Disease Outbreak, I Say To Myself, "ok, That'll Get People Realizing How Lucky We Are To Have Vaccines."

In The Developing World, It's About Time That Women Are On The Agenda. For Instance, 80 Percent Of Small-subsistence Farmers In Sub-saharan Africa Are Women, And Yet All The Programs In The Past Were Predominantly Focused On Men.

What Great Changes Have Not Been Ambitious?

We [with Bill Gates] Started To Make Decisions About What We'd Invest In. Then I Actually Started Traveling For The Foundation. I've Probably Been To India Now Eight Times At Least And Africa Numerous Times.

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Even In Our Own Agriculture Strategy, If We Got A Great New Drought-resistant Seed And We Managed To Get It Distributed In The System, We Just Assumed That It Would Reach Female Farmers. That's A False Assumption, Because Women Don't Interact With Agro-dealers. So If You Don't Develop Specific Programming To Ensure That Seed Gets In A Woman's Hands, Then The Extra Income [generated By Higher-yielding Crops] Goes Into Her Husband's Hands.

Vaccines Are A Miracle Cure. Eight Out Of 10 Children Are Getting Vaccines.

You Can Have The Best Vaccines For A Woman Or Her Child, But If You Can't Get Her To Come And Get Them Then They Won't Work.

That's Universal - We All Want To Bring Every Good Thing To Our Children. But What's Not Universal Is Our Ability To Provide Every Good Thing.

In Different Places You Run Into Myths Around Vaccination Or Around Family Planning. In The United States, One Of The Myths That Existed For A Long Time, That Has Been Completely Debunked, Was That Autism Was Linked To A Vaccine.

I'm Constantly Saying To Myself, 'i'm Lucky I Was Born In The United States.

My Undergraduate Work Was In Computer Science And Economics. It Just Happened To Be At That Time When 34 Percent Of Computer-science Majors Were Women. We Didn't Realize It Was At The Peak At The Time.

We Started Our Foundation Because We Believe We Have A Real Opportunity To Help Advance Equity Around The World, To Help Make Sure That, No Matter Where A Person Is Born, He Or She Has The Chance To Live A Healthy, Productive Life.

We Also Ought To Recognize That Unpaid Labor Falls Predominantly To Women. The Other Thing I Would Do In Countries Like The U.s. Is To Show More Men, Even In Tv Ads, Doing Household Work. Only Two Percent Of Ads Show Men Doing Chores, And Yet We Know They Actually Do Several Hours Of It In Real Life. Those Images Affect Young Boys And Girls.

I Am Catholic, I Was Raised Catholic, I Am A Practicing Catholic. But I Say We Need To Agree To Disagree. We Have A Shared Mission Around Poverty, And I Focus On That, Because We Do A Lot With The Catholic Church Around Poverty Alleviation. I'm Always Looking For: What Is The Common Thread? What Do We Care About? What Do We Believe In? We Believe In Women Around The World. We Believe In All Lives Have Equal Value.

Our Economies Are Built On The Backs Of All This Unpaid Labor That Women Do.

The Biggest Killers Of Children Around The World Are Two Things: Diarrhea And Pneumonia. When You Think About It, In The United States, Kids Don't Die Of Diarrhea Anymore, But It's A Huge Problem In The Developing World.

With Economic Opportunity, Sometimes It's Making Sure That If They're Not In A Place Where They Can Have Good Jobs, That When They Have Economic Opportunity, They Have Digital Tools To Use.

Sanitation Issues In The Developing World Affect Women More Than They Affect Men.

If You Don't Invest In The Woman, Empower Her, Give Her The Things She Needs To Lift Her Family Up, You're Just Not Going To Make The Progress That You Want To Make. But If You Put Her At The Centre, You Can Change A Lot For That Family, And It Has Ripple Effects Through The Economy.

It Is Still Just Unbelievable To Us That Diarrhea Is One Of The Leading Causes Of Child Deaths In The World.

Government Funding That's Coming From The United States Is Making A Huge Difference On The Ground In The Developing World. It's Really Palpable - It's Making A Huge Difference Saving Lives.

Childbearing, I Mean, If There's No Place To Go To Deliver Your Baby, Then You're The One That's Delivering In Those Unhealthy Circumstances. Or If You Can't Get Access To Family Planning, Your Chances Of Surviving And Being Able To Bring Your Kids Up If They Come One Right After The Other, That Locks You Into A Cycle Of Poverty.

You Are Indebted To Life Until You Help Some Less Fortunate Person, Just As You Were Helped.

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The World Is Full Of What Seem Like Intractable Problems. Often We Let That Paralyze Us. Instead, Let Is Spur You To Action. There Are Some People In The World That We Can't Help, But There Are So Many More That We Can. So When You See A Mother And Her Children Suffering In Another Part Of The World, Don't Look Away. Look Right At Them. Let Them Break Your Heart, Then Let Your Empathy And Your Talents Help You Make A Difference In The Lives Of Others. Whether You Volunteer Every Week Or Just A Few Times A Year, Your Time And Unique Skills Are Invaluable.

Bill [gates] And I Believe Philanthropy Can Only Be Effective If It Starts Things And Proves Whether They Actually Work Or Not. That's The Place That Governments Often Don't Want To, Or Can't, Work.

All Lives Have An Equal Value.

In The United States, There's Definitely Some Controversy About Birth Control In General, And I Think We Needed To Split The Debate And Have People Realize That We Actually Agree As A Country About Contraceptives. Over 93 Percent Of American Women Say They Use Contraceptives, And They Feel Very Good About It.

We Set Out What's Going To Be Our Work Time Versus Our Foundation Time Versus Family Time, And We'll Reassess That... Sometimes Every Week.

If You Ask, Who Has The Chance To Move Into The City And Get A Good Job Out In The Developing World? It's A Man. Who's Left To Care For The Kids Back At Home? The Woman Is.

If You Don't Have An Effective Teacher In Front Of The Classroom, You Won't Change The Trajectory For Students.

Men Make Different Investments Than Women Do. Women Tend To Invest More Of Their Earnings Than Men Do In Their Family's Well-being - As Much As 10 Times More.

As A Woman Finds Economic Opportunity, Even If She's Only Earning A Couple Of Dollars A Day, If She Can Save It On Her Phone, She Then Makes Different Decisions For Her Household Than Her Husband Might.

Poverty Disproportionately Affects Women Around The World.

Around The World

Sometimes It's The People You Can't Help Who Inspire You The Most.

Kids Are Falling Through The Cracks And Nobody Notices It. That To Me Is What's Wrong With The School System.

All Women, Everywhere, Have The Same Hopes: We Want To Be Self-sufficient And Create Better Lives For Ourselves And Our Loved Ones.

I Went To Business School, And I Went Straight From That To A Nine-year Career At Microsoft. Eventually, I Ran A Big Chunk Of The Consumer Products Division For Microsoft.then I Left With The Birth Of Our First Daughter Because Bill And I Both Wanted To Have A Few Kids.

When I Studied Computer Science At Duke University In The First Half Of The 1980s, I Had Professors Who Treated Women Differently Than Men. I Kind Of Got Used To It. At Microsoft, I Had To Use My Elbows And Make Sure I Spoke Up At The Table, But It Was An Incredibly Meritocratic Place. Outside, In The Industry, I Would Feel The Sexism. I'd Walk Into A Room And Until I Proved My Worth, Everyone Would Assume That The Guy Presenting With Me Had Credibility And I Didn't.

When We Better Understand The Realities Of These Women's Lives, We Are Able To Design And Deliver Solutions That Are More Useful To Them.

I'm Happy We Have Three Healthy Children And We'll Stay With Three Healthy Children.

If You Are Successful, It Is Because Somewhere, Sometime, Someone Gave You A Life Or An Idea That Started You In The Right Direction. Remember Also That You Are Indebted To Life Until You Help Some Less Fortunate Person, Just As You Were Helped.

In The Developing World, They Don't Have Smartphones Yet. They Have The Older Plastic Phones, But Women Are Saving Money On Those, Because They Don't Have Access To Banks. Having That Access To Digital Money Changes Everything For Her Because She Actually Doesn't Have To Negotiate With Her Husband, Which She Will Tell You Is Very Hard In These Circumstances, Especially When The Means Are Meager. She's Expected To Have Money To Pay For The Kids' Health Or To Help With The School Fees.

Women Are The Centre Of The Family. It's The Woman Who Decides What's Eaten In The House, When To Have The Kids Vaccinated; Everything That Has To Do With The Children's Health Revolves Around Her.

Mothers Might Say They'd Go To The Doctor. In Poor Countries, Moms Are Usually Responsible For Their Kids' Health. But Breastfeeding And Traveling To The Clinic Take Time, And Research Shows That Health Care Is One Of The First Tradeoffs Women Make When They're Too Busy.

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