Bill Gates meets Adityanath, to extend his NGO’s cooperation to fight diseases in UP

Bill and Melinda Gates foundation renewed and expanded the understanding for cooperation with the UP government for five more years

Updated on: Nov 17, 2017, 18:52:33 IST

Hindustan Times, Lucknow | By Umesh Raghuvanshi, Lucknow

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Microsoft founder Bill Gates held a long meeting with Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Friday when they agreed to extend and expand welfare projects being carried out by the charity that Gates runs along with his wife.

Bill Gates speaks at a programme in New Delhi on Thursday, a day he met UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath. (Sanchit Khanna/HT)

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) will continue for another five years its assistance to the state government, and will join hands in fighting Japanese Encephalitis (JE) and Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES), diseases that claim the lives of hundreds of children every year.

BMGF has been helping out in those efforts since 2012 when they formed a five-year understanding with the then administration. In addition to renewing the pact, the BMGF will now also help strengthen the National Institute of Virology’s regional field station in Gorakhpur and provide technical help to improve soil in order to help better farm incomes.

The CM said informed Gates about the immunisation programme launched by his government that has covered over 92 lakh children this year.

BMGF has also agreed to help in fighting Kala-azar in Kushinagar district.

A spokesperson said BMGF would provide soil testing technology spectroscopy to support the state government’s endeavour of increasing income of famers.

An official spokesman said while Gates left to attend a programme on farmers in Andhra Pradesh, meetings between the state government and BMGF officers were still on to give final touches to the memorandum on the scope of cooperation.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Umesh Raghuvanshi
Umesh Raghuvanshi is an award-winning journalist with nearly four decades of demonstrated experience in the profession. He is the author of Ayodhya: The Gods Are Liberated. He is skilled in storytelling and newswriting, and writes on politics, governance, legislature, finance, environment, and social issues. He is based in Lucknow, is well-travelled, and has covered several national and international events, as well as all assembly and parliament elections in Uttar Pradesh since 1984. He has been a visiting scholar at the Graduate School of Journalism, University of California, Berkeley, USA, and a Metcalf Fellow at the Metcalf Institute of Marine and Environmental Reporting, University of Rhode Island, USA. He is a science graduate from DBS College, Dehradun, and holds an MA in Political Science from DAV (PG) College, Dehradun. He won the KC Kulish International Merit Award for excellence in journalism (2015) and received it in New Delhi in 2017. He also won a competition organised by the United Nations Environment Programme DTIE OzonAction Programme in 2009 that assessed coverage of the interlinkages between ozone and climate change. He was awarded in Beijing, China, in 2010. He started his career with a Dehradun-based English daily in the early 1980s and later worked with The Pioneer too.Read More