An interview with Bill Gates

Available resources in general, and in particular those available to specific individuals/foundations, are limited, hence it is not possible to pursue both worldwide internet access and malaria eradication with the same strength as you can pursue either of them.

Of course, there may well be factors where by doing A, you also achieve parts of B, but given that the timeframe before ‘world-wide internet access’ helps ‘researching a malaria vaccine’ is at least ten-or-so years (the absolute minimum time it takes someone with no education to get anywhere where they can actively develop vaccines), I doubt that this is feasible.

I'd say he's at least partially wrong. Diseases are often cause by lack of knowledge and education, outburst can often be contained with good means of communication. I know people doing projects that use the internet (or cellphone text messages) to allow remote villages to better manage the available health resources. Internet connectivity allows the local healing person, often a nurse or similar level to send pictures and descriptions of wounds and health issues to a qualified doctor. This allows the doctors to actually go to the villages where they're needed most - actually saving lives. So the internet may very well be a live-saving thing.

The other point that people forget is that it's extremely hard to completely eradicate a disease. The only disease that I know of that's completely eradicated is the small pox. Polio, leprosy and even the black death are merely contained to a varying degree, often only in developed countries even though vaccines or cheap, effective treatments exist. So investing in connectivity and helping to spread information may actually be a viable path.

rshlo has editorialized this title, and thus some comments here are pointless knee-jerk reactions to a bad title, rather than a reaction to what's actually in the article.