SimplyAbuDhabi XXXVII

His wife, Melinda, he admits, is more adept at talking in stories. When I interviewed her last year, she happily chatted about her sex life to explain the importance of contraception. Gates squirms at the idea but insists he doesn’t only think in data terms and can be affected by desperate individual cases. “If we are sitting listening to a woman who felt she had to become a sex worker to support her kids, of course I am moved.” Does he ever cry? “I do cry. If you bring me a story I am more likely to cry than most people, or when we are watching a movie or something. I was reading this book, A Gentleman in Moscow, one evening and I was 100 pages ahead of Melinda and I start crying and she says, ‘Oh, no’ - she thought a particular character in the book must have died.” But he says being emotional isn’t useful and looks uncomfortable at the thought of hugging those he has helped. “There are 7 billion people in the world and only 24 hours in a day - I can’t go out and visit them all and see what’s wrong. I need to make sure the data is right when you sit with women’s groups out in a remote village in India. Their stories are valuable, but what I need to do comes from the stats.” He elaborates. “Six million kids are still dying around the world before the age of five. If you want to meaningfully affect that number you can’t do it village by village or person by person. The world has the intelligence and resources to cut that six million to three million a year with vaccination programmes. It would cost less than we spend on dog food, or baldness drugs.” Gates is not a vain man, and I suspect he genuinely can’t understand why anyone would want to spend money on their appearance rather than a vaccine or research and education projects. We head into his first conference, where he manages to smile for three hours as they discuss health issues while I fall asleep. It’s a performance worthy of the Queen but he is genuinely fascinated. Finally, we go upstairs to his briefing room - the spa and swimming pool remain unvisited. Wouldn’t he like a quick dip? “No.” Or a massage? “Definitely not.” He just wants a whiteboard, a computer and paper so he can draw me some graphs - and a can of Diet Coke. When the tech wizard first started saving lives in southeast Asia and Africa, wealthy friends would corner him at parties and ask whether it was a good idea. “They thought if more people survived that would be a drain on resources, feeding them. But when we got involved we found in every society the parents adjust the number of kids they want when they see the kids surviving. It’s as though they are optimising a superhigh probability of having at least one child to look after them when they get old.” So, paradoxically, he discovered reducing childhood death was the most powerful tool for reducing population growth in Africa. “That gave us permission to do malaria, HIV, polio. Many of these diseases mean even if you survive, your brain and your body never develop, especially if you are malnourished. The Chinese used to be shorter than [people in] the west in 1990; now they are slightly taller. That’s progress.” Others warned him that improving people’s lives would increase the flow of ambitious immigrants to the west. Gates agrees. “Superpoor people, except in extreme conditions of war or famine, don’t move much. In the Syrian civil war the first wave to leave were doctors, lawyers, architects. In the short term, the people who think they can travel long distances, adapt and do well are the more educated.” But, he explains, the only solution to unwanted immigration is to ensure that the African continent becomes an attractive place to bring up a family. “The Africa continent is around one billion people today and the population forecast for 2100 is four billion,” he explains. “By the end of the century, it will be home to five of the world’s largest cities. So we have to make Africa a good place to live, and fast.” 054 | SIMPLY INFLUENTIAL I do cry. If you bring me a story i am more likely to cry than most people.” “ SIMPLY INFLUENTIAL | 055 Bill Gates, 63, with his wife, Melinda, 54, photographed in Paris by Vincent Capman