How the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is Fighting COVID-19

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: But what happens when this hits the so-called developing world?

MARK SUZMAN, CEO, GATES FOUNDATION: Well, it is starting to hit. Literally, the call I did just before coming on your show was a meeting with our teams right across Africa and Asia about the preparedness, what they’re seeing in the — from Bangladesh to Pakistan to India to Ethiopia to Nigeria. The virus is there. It’s not there at the scale and scope that it is in Europe or the United States yet. Many of those countries have actually taken much firmer steps more quickly. They are learning from the experience and have gone into national shutdowns. Countries like South Africa, India, Pakistan are in national shutdowns right now. And that’s important for containing the spread of the virus, because one of the really big risks in places like that is, these big urban slums make it impossible to do social distancing. If you’re living three, four, five people to a room, families, where are you going to go? That’s our big concern is that, if the virus really gets loose in communities like that, it could be devastating, especially because those countries don’t have access to those medical facilities and all the statistics you were just citing. And last but not least, there is already a knock-on effect in those places that have very scarce medical resources of just routine medical care. What’s happening to pregnant women with complications? What’s happening to your regular vaccination? There’s already a knock-on effect happening, which we’re quite concerned about.

AMANPOUR: And just finally, obviously, the Gates Foundation does a lot of work in the developing world, a lot of work around Africa and elsewhere. Is there anything specifically that you’re looking at, anything you could sort of target now to try to help out?

SUZMAN: Well, the first is just really helping, again, scale up their own testing facilities, treatment. That was the earliest support we gave. We actually gave support right at the end of January, when the crisis was still largely China-based, to the African Centers for Disease Control to help countries develop the testing facilities, because, at that time, only two African countries actually had the equipment to actually test. So we have helped build that up. That’s critical. Now, you talked about 50 states competing for PPE here. What you have are these very poor unequipped countries, who are getting outbid massively by rich countries to try and get essential gear and treatment. And so we need to try and help them get access to that collectively. And then there are also some other steps we’re looking at, and with partners, about, are there ways you can get your big emergency treatment facilities outside those big slums, for example, that might allow you to take some of the more vulnerable people out, like the elderly, who can’t self-isolate, or early people who have contracted the virus?