Reinventing toilets is Bill Gates' new mission | Latest News Delhi - Hindustan Times
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Reinventing toilets is Bill Gates' new mission

Hindustan Times | By, New Delhi
May 31, 2012 11:20 PM IST

Reinventing the toilet. That's what 56-year-old Bill Gates — Microsoft founder, tech whiz, philanthropist, innovator and world's second richest man — dreams of these days.

Reinventing the toilet. That's what 56-year-old Bill Gates — Microsoft founder, tech whiz, philanthropist, innovator and world's second richest man — dreams of these days.

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"Reinventing the toilet, that's my dream. I have many dreams: a world that's AIDS-free, polio-free, malaria-free, I'm an optimist. A low-cost toilet that doesn't require water, is sanitary… this flush toilet doesn't exist yet, but it will," says Gates, who is the co-chair of the $37 billion Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF),the largest philanthropic organisation in the world.

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The BMGF has put money into his dream and asked people to come up with designs for cheap toilets, so 2.6 million of the world's poor may benefit.

Gates is in India on a three-day visit that will take him to four states for meetings with four Union ministers, UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav, philathropists Ratan Tata and Azim Premji.

The highpoint of his itinerary till Day 2 was a visit to slums in Lucknow, on a mission to understand the contraception needs of women in the country's most populous states, where 4 million of India's 27 million babies are born each year.

Yet women, even conservative ones, stepped out to discuss their contraceptive needs with the rich foreign stranger who seemed very interested in their lives. "Anything to do with sex is complicated. I met a Muslim woman who told me her mother-in-law wouldn't drink water from her hands if she went for sterilisation," he says.

For Africa
In meetings with Union ministers SM Krishna and Ghulam Nabi Azad, Gates explored possibility of open a new window of cooperation with Indian government in Africa. The talks were stressed on health sector in Africa.

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  • ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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    Sanchita is the health & science editor of the Hindustan Times. She has been reporting and writing on public health policy, health and nutrition for close to two decades. She is an International Reporting Project fellow from Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at the Bloomberg School of Public Health and was part of the expert group that drafted the Press Council of India’s media guidelines on health reporting, including reporting on people living with HIV.

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