Bill Gates praises German Ebola reponse

At a meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin on Tuesday, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates lauded the German effort to fight Ebola, as well as its investments in health programs in developing counties all over the world.

The Ebola epidemic should be a wake-up call to industrialized nations, Gates said after his meeting with Merkel, adding that investing in "immediate help is just as necessary as long-term research into neglected infectious diseases and developing health systems in developing countries."

Merkel also pointed out after their talk that the recent outbreak of Ebola in West Africa was a call to action that showed that "health crises can almost overnight reach to a global extent."

Germany will host a conference for supporters of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization in January, to which the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the largest private donor. GAVI has already immunized 440 million children in developing countries.

German Development Minister Gerd Müller also met with Gates. Afterward, Müller announced that the federal government "plans to increase our support for GAVI by 40 million euros yearly - provided that the Bundestag agrees."

Müller wants to give nearly 500 million euros ($620 million) in total to GAVI-led projects by 2020. GAVI is a Swiss-based organization that brings together international bodies such as the World Health Organization, government groups, private donors, vaccine producers and research institutions to provide children in the world's poorest nations with access to immunizations.

es/mkg (dpa, KNA)