Bloomberg and Gates tackle Tobacco

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and philanthropist Bill Gates announced plans to raise $500 million for a campaign used to kick Big Tobacco – you guessed it – in the butt.

This is particularly significant for developing nations, as they are becoming popular targets for cigarette companies’ market demographic.

From the New York Times (Op-ed):

[Bloomberg and Gates’] target is a worthy one: tobacco companies and government-owned tobacco enterprises trying to addict hundreds of millions of new customers in the developing world as sales stagnate or shrivel in the industrialized nations…. The goal [of the campaign] is to reverse the rapid rise of smoking in such countries as China, India and Russia and to head off the epidemic in Africa before it can become entrenched.

Many countries have become addicted to the revenues generated by tobacco taxes or government-owned tobacco companies. They will have to be persuaded that the long-term health damage caused by tobacco far exceeds any short-term gain from tobacco revenues.

Bloomberg and Gates have already committed $375 to begin burning-out the competition – and plan on getting to the neediest countries before Big Tobacco does.

-Betsy Avila

This Just In

Videos from the Gates Foundation’s Malaria Forum below.

See Bill Gates’ first post on the ONE Blog here.

An Audacious Goal

This week in Seattle, an extraordinary group of people – scientists, policymakers, and advocates – came together for three days to discuss what can be done to stop malaria. Melinda and I issued a challenge to those attending the meeting. We asked them to begin charting a course to eradicate malaria – not just to control or reduce it, but to work toward a time when no one on earth is infected with malaria, and no mosquitoes carry the disease.

Today, malaria kills more than one million people every year, most of them children in Africa. That’s the equivalent of losing every student in the New York City public school system in one year.

We know that eradicating malaria is an audacious goal. But advances in science and medicine, new political commitments, and the dedication of people like you have given the world an historic opportunity to conquer malaria. It won’t be easy and it won’t happen quickly, but I’m optimistic that we can make this disease history.

At the forum in Seattle, Melinda and I called on the U.S. presidential candidates to commit to expand the President’s Malaria Initiative, a great program started by President Bush. I hope you will join us in asking all of the candidates to make this pledge and keep the fight against malaria on the national agenda.

I am confident that together, we can produce the energy, compassion, and commitment needed to win the fight against malaria.

-Bill Gates

*** To view a webcast of the Seattle malaria forum, visit www.kaisernetwork.org/healthcast/malariaforum2007. For more information about how you can help fight malaria, visit ONE.org.