But as I read those words, I knew they weren"t super relevant. What I didn"t say was, by the way, we"re not focused on the fact that half a million people on this continent are dying every year from malaria. But we are sure as hell going to bring you computers. Before I went to Soweto, I thought I understood the world"s problems but I was blind to many of the most important ones. I was so taken aback by what I saw that I had to ask myself, did I still believe that innovation could solve the world"s toughest problemsI promised myself that before I came back to Africa, I would fi nd out more about what keeps people poor. Over the years, Melinda and I did learn more about the pressing needs of the poor.
On a later trip to South Africa, I paid a visit to a hospital for patients with MDR-TB, multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, a disease with a cure rate of under 50%. I remember that hospital as a place of despair. It was a giant open ward, with a sea of patients shuffl ing around in pajamas, wearing masks. There was one fl oor just for children, including some babies lying in bed. They had a little school for kids, who were well enough to learn, but many of the children couldn"t make it, and the hospital didn"t seem to know whether it was worth it to keep the school open.
I talked to a patient there in her early 30s. She had been a worker at a TB hospital when she came down with a cough. She went to a doctor and he told her said she had drug-resistant TB. She was later diagnosed with AIDS. She wasn"t going to live much longer, but there were plenty of MDR patients waiting to take her bed when she vacated it. This was hell with a waiting list.
But seeing this hell didn"t reduce my optimism. It channeled it. I got into the car as I left and I told the doctor we were working with I know MDR-TB is hard to cure, but we must do something for these people. And, in fact, this year, we are entering phase three with the new TB drug regime for patients who respond, instead of a 50%cure rate after 18 months for $2，000，we get an 80%cure rate after six months for under $100.Optimism is often dismissed as false hope. But there is also false hopelessness. That"s the attitude that says we can"t defeat poverty and disease. We absolutely can.
MELINDA GATES：Bill called me that day after he visited the TB hospital and normally if one of us is on an international trip, we will go through our agenda for the day and who we met and where we have been. But this call was different. Bill said to me, Melinda, I have been somewhere that I have never been before. And then he choked up and he couldn"t go on. And he fi nally just said, I will tell you more when I get home. And I knew what he was going through because when you see people with so little hope, it breaks your heart.
But if you want to do the most, you have to go see the worst, and I"ve had days like that too. About ten years ago, I traveled with a group of friends to India. And on last day I was there, I had a meeting with a group of prostitutes and I expected to talk to them about the risk of AIDS that they were facing, but what they wanted to talk to me about was stigma. Many of these women had been abandoned by their husbands. That"s why they even went into prostitution. They wanted to be able to feed their children. They were so low in the eyes of society that they could be raped and robbed and beaten by anyone, even the police, and nobody cared. Talking to them about their lives was so moving to me, but what I remember most was how much they wanted to be touched. They wanted to touch me and to be touched by them. It was if physical contact somehow proved their worth. And so before I left, we linked arms hand in hand and did a photo together.
Later that same day, I spent some time in India in a home for the dying. I walked into a large hall and I saw rows and rows of cot and every cot was attended to except for one, that was far off in the corner. And so I decided to go over there.
The patient who was in this room was a woman in her 30s. And I remember her eyes. She had these huge, brown, sorrowful eyes. She was emaciated and on the verge of death. Her intestines were not holding anything and so the workers had put a pan under her bed, and cut a hole in the bottom of the bed and everything in her was just pouring out into that pan. And I could tell that she had AIDS. Both in the way she looked and the fact that she was off in this corner alone. The stigma of AIDS is vicious, especially for women. And the punishment is abandonment. When I arrived at her cot, I suddenly felt completely and totally helpless. I had absolutely nothing I could offer this woman. I knew I couldn"t save her. But I didn"t want her to be alone. So I knelt down with her and I put my hand out and she reached for my hand and grabbed it and she wouldn"t let it go. I didn"t speak her language and I couldn"t think of what I should say to her. And fi nally I just said to her, it"s going to be okay. It"s going to be okay. It"s not your fault.
And after I had been with her for some time, she started pointing to the roof top. She clearly wanted to go up and I realized the sun was going down and what she wanted to do was go up on the roof top and see the sunset. So the workers in this home for the dying were very busy and I said to them, you know, can we take her up on the roof topNo. No. We have to pass out medicines. So I waited for that to happen and I asked another worker and they said, No, no, no, we are too busy. We can"t get her up there. And so fi nally I just scooped this woman up in my arms. She was nothing more than skin over bones and I took her up on the roof top, and I found one of those plastic chairs that blows over in a light breeze. I put her there, sat her down, put a blanket over her legs and she sat there facing to the west, watching the sunset. The workers knew——I made sure they knew that she was up there so that they would bring her down later that evening after the sun went down and then I had to leave.
