Bill Gates Releases Musquitoes at a Packed Conference

'There's no reason only poor people should get malaria': The moment Bill Gates released jar of mosquitoes at packed conference

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It was a show-stopping move by any standards.

Bill Gates, the billionaire founder of Microsoft and a renowned philanthropist, let loose a swarm of mosquitoes at a technology conference in California to highlight the dangers of malaria.

‘Malaria is spread by mosquitoes,’ the Microsoft founder yelled at a well-heeled crowd at a technology conference in California.

’I brought some,’ he added. ‘Here, I’ll let them roam around – there is no reason only poor people should be infected.’
He let the shocked audience sweat for a minute or so before assuring them that the freed insects were malaria- free.

But that didn’t satisfy all the attendees.

‘That’s it. I am not sitting up front anymore,’ eBay founder Pierre Omidyar said.

The stunt was an attempt by Gates – who quit Microsoft last year to concentrate on his charity work - to hammer home the importance of malaria prevention.

It is one of the pet projects of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that announced last year it was donating £115 million to help develop a vaccine for the deadly disease.
Up to 2.7 million people a year still die of malaria each year, 75 per cent of them African children.

I have to say, I'm proud of the guy for his daring move. Some people say he's only doing it for attention, but I think it's the right kind of attention. He's trying to encourage people to do something if they can to help find preventive means against Malaria for everyone around the world. Getting the big cheeses of the food chain realize that they can easily be on the bottom of it, could just get them to think again about where they spend their money.

+ Respect for Mr. Gates