Bill Gates Quotes

We've actually eliminated Type II polio in the world, at least as far as we can tell.

Pandemic influenza is by nature an international issue; it requires an international solution.

Ninety percent of the cases of polio are in security-vulnerable areas.

A more effective international disease surveillance system is essential for global security both against a bioterrorist attack or a naturally occurring disease.

Polio's pretty special because once you get an eradication, you no longer have to spend money on it; it's just there as a gift for the rest of time.

My fear is that if we don't take remedial steps to control polio in the tribal areas, we will be faced with international sanctions.

The Ebola epidemic was the most frightening outbreak I have witnessed in my lifetime, and I believe it was necessary to react globally as strongly as we did.

We have two other countries, Pakistan and Afghanistan - again it's the instability that is a problem there. So over the next several years, we expect to drive the number of [polio] cases back down to zero because that is likely to be the second disease after smallpox that we completely eradicate.

'Contagion' should serve as a wake-up call not only about the germs, but perhaps more importantly about the frailty of governance, nationally and worldwide.

The ideal thing would be to have a 100 percent effective AIDS vaccine. And to have broad usage of that vaccine. That would literally break the epidemic.

After all it really is all of humanity that is under threat during a pandemic.

It is a remarkable fact that smallpox, a scourge for thousands of years, has now vanished from the earth, except for two tiny vials, one locked in a highly secure facility at the Centers for Disease Control, in Atlanta, and another stored in a similarly secure vault in Siberia.

Ebola is a nasty disease to get. It's scary. But as a weapon, it is probably not likely. Ebola is a difficult malady to weaponize and deliver efficiently.

The Carter Center has the only existing international taskforce on disease eradication. Which means a total elimination of a disease on the face of the Earth. In the history of the world, there's only been one disease eradicated: smallpox. The second disease, I think, is gonna be guinea worm.

I believe we have to nip Ebola in the bud before it spreads through Africa and to other countries.

Now a cholera epidemic was sweeping through Southeast Asia and south Asia in the early 1970s, so I started medical school and I joined a laboratory to work on this.

What the experts are telling me is that there's very little chance that Ebola is going to mutate into something that could spread directly through the air. The real concern is not whether Ebola could go airborne, but whether it could spread faster.

The world can now maintain an acute infection in a way that is unprecedented in the history of life on our planet.

Smallpox is the only human infectious disease ever eradicated by science.

History has told us that no one can stop a pandemic. The question is: when is it going to happen? I don't think anybody has the answer to it. We have to be on the lookout for any time, any day.

It’s not the mosquitoes who spread the disease [Zika]. Mosquitoes don’t travel more than 500 yards from where they are born. It’s the people. They travel.

A vaccine that prevented tuberculosis would merit a Nobel Prize, but it's just very difficult to develop.

By recognizing that infectious disease is not some faraway exotic issue but a global problem, and by sharing the responsibility for its prevention, diagnosis, and control, the whole world will be a lot safer.

We have to keep up our guard. We won't get the risk of Ebola to zero in the U.S. until we stop it in West Africa. And Ebola is hard to fight. It requires intensity. It requires speed and flexibility.

Our progress against malaria is impressive. But vigilance remains a critical ingredient to protect the health of all people.