The Power to Save Lives

The article that I chose was from Forbes magazine and is about Bill Gates mission to rid the world of disease.  Bill Gates has become one of the biggest philanthropists of all time and in this article it talks about where the billions of dollars that he has donated goes.  Gates is in the process of changing the world as we know it through vaccines that are being delivered to third world countries.  He has cut deaths from the measles from 1.5 million a year at its peak to 300,000.  They are also in the process of creating, delivering, and funding vaccines for the cure of multiple other diseases and have begun to succeed.  The results have been massive: 3.4 million lives saved from hepatitis B, which causes liver cancer, 1.2 million lives from measles, 560,000 from the Hib bacteria, 474,000 from whooping cough, 140,000 from yellow fever and 30,000 from polio. In the past year the new initiatives have prevented another 8,000 deaths from pneumonia and 1,000 from diarrhea.  What does this all have to do with business, absolutely everything.  If you look at any business on the S&P 500 all of them devote a certain amount of time, energy, money, and resources to philanthropy.  Nobody wants to buy products from a business that is not willing to give back or let their employees give back.  Bill Gates does not do this work for his reputation or that of his business but it certainly does not hurt either.