Gates pledges $750m to health fund

Microsoft founder Bill Gates has ridden to the rescue of a beleaguered health fund by pledging US$750m (€569.57m) to fight three of the world's killer diseases.

He says the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's donation to the Geneva-based Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria comes on top of $650m (€493.6m) it contributed to the fund over the past decade.

Gates said his pledge at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland - a magnet for the world's business elite - is meant to encourage other potential donors.

"These are tough economic times, but that is no excuse for cutting aid to the world's poorest," he said.

A donor backlash over reports about poor financial monitoring and tens of millions of dollars of losses at the $23bn (€17.46bn) fund prompted the organisation last year to cancel more than $1bn (€759.4m) in new spending.

The fund's executive director, Dr Michel Kazatchkine, this week announced his resignation.

"I think we can't be more transparent than we have been. We're by far the most transparent organisation in development," he said at Davos.

Gates said the promissory note was designed so the fund "can immediately use the money and save lives."

He downplayed the fund's reported losses of tens of millions of dollars to corruption, misuse and undocumented spending.

He said he was lending his "credibility" to the fund so others would feel reassured.

The public-private fund has helped change the fortunes of many of the world's poor through its prevention and treatment programmes among 150 countries, Gates said.