Bill Gates in an interview with The Cable, where he was asked about lessons learnt from the recent eradication of polio, and how the experience can help in the eradication of malaria from Africa, said “Moving to malaria, it is a very awful disease not just to the kids it kills but to the many kids whose brains are permanently damaged, the economic effects you have with malaria. If we don’t have new tools like vaccines or new ways of killing mosquitoes, it would probably take more than 25 years to get rid of malaria. If we get the new tools and they work, we think it can be done in under 20 years. So the malaria field is both trying to keep the number of deaths down, and we have to deal with the resistance that comes up, that the mosquitoes develop.”

He added “I am very enthusiastic about the work our malaria team which is investing in some of these tools to fight resistance including the ones that have to do with killing mosquitoes. So, my hope is that we can get it done in less that 20 years; if the world stays focused on it, that should be possible”

Gates Foundation Report notes that, “We’ve been set back about 25 years in about 25 weeks.” Extreme poverty increased 7% because of COVID-19. In a video included in the Foundation’s report, Bill Gates explains how COVID-19 disrupts the fight against malaria.