mumbai bill gates the worlds richest man has mega plans for indias children sometime this year a desi vaccine developed and produced as part of his bill melinda gates foundations work may get governmental nod to be distributed throughout india for rs54 apiece i am waiting for the day all indian children will get the rotavirus vaccine he told toi in an exclusive chat during a brief stopover in mumbai rotavirus is a leading cause of diarrhoea among children in the country claiming over 60000 lives a year the microsoft chairman whose funding for health projects in india has been 14 billion so far is also going to help mumbais ongoing battle against multidrugresistant tuberculosis mumbai is doing interesting stuff in areas like tb control it leads the way in lots of improvements there is a real sense of progress its tb control programme can be catalytic for other parts of india he said here are excerpts from the interviewyour foundation has chosen to work mainly in up and bihar but what about the urban poor in mumbai and other metros we care a lot about the urban poor making sure that slums have access to sanitation healthcare and education is the top problem for india towards this end we are inventing a toilet that would work without water to have a flushed toilet in every house in mumbai is completely unaffordable so we certainly need to innovate and give people sanitation there is a meeting in march next year in india to present the latest designsyou have spoken about how india could emerge as an affordable vaccine supplier for the entire world but in light of the ranbaxy story arent you wary of indian companies and their scientific claims i am not an expert on the ranbaxy matter but it has happened to many companies in the us regarding indian vaccine and drug manufacturers their overall reputation is good the serum institute has never had a problem with manufacturing or recall our pentavalent vaccine was approved in two states and has now been extended to ninepublic health experts believe that too many vaccines during childhood isnt good comment they are not experts seriously why did small pox go away i wonder why it was killing two million children a year maybe it was ok why did measles go away i wonder why there is no kid paralyzed with polio if you can question that you are probably not an expert medical science is appropriately careful about things that we give to childrenyour foundation has worked on several fronts in india from aids to tb to vaccines what was your pet project i am thrilled with the results in the field of polio india has done a spectacular job i met with representatives of the national polio surveillance project and they are now turning their attention to routine immunization they are looking at why children do not get all the shots what families believe etc i am super excited