28.01.2012, Jeddah, KSA – During a visit to the IDB Group Headquarters, Bill Gates, founder of The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Dr. Ahmad Mohamed Ali, President of the IDB Group, expressed their firm commitment to polio eradication and control of major communicable diseases affecting the IDB least Developed Member countries and to address the daunting challenges of food security affecting the poor.
Addressing Mr Bill Gates and his delegation, the President, IDB Group, appreciated the benevolent efforts undertaken by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in the least developed countries around the world, amongst them a number of IDB member countries.
Following IDB presentations, Mr. Gates commended IDB Group for its developmental work and proposed to establish joint partnership programs to spearhead cost-effective health and agriculture projects in the least developed member countries with the aim of improving the health status as well as food security for the poor.
The partnership is expected to primarily focus on polio eradication in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Nigeria, where the bulk of the world’s polio and malaria cases exist, it will also be extended to the Agriculture sector by enhancing the livelihood of small holder farmers in Sub Saharan Africa with the introduction of improved farming technologies as well as value chain approach.
Both parties have agreed to establish a technical working group that will soon meet to devise a 3-year mutual cooperation program for polio eradication and propose actions for other potential areas of collaboration in the health and agriculture sectors.