Billionaire philanthropists choose universal health as their cause

Barack Obama isn’t the only one to have put health at the top of his priority agenda.

According to this week’s Forbes magazine, six out of the eleven philanthropists who have given over a billion dollars to good causes are working in this direction too.

On August 24 for the first time ever, the American magazine published a ranking of top givers, as well as the usual world’s richest.

Out of the 793 super rich people named in the list, only 11 make it onto the giving one, with eight out of eleven being American. 

At the top: Bill Gates, with 28 billion dollars already allocated, and the declared objective to kill HIV, malaria and tuberculosis.

His friend Warren Buffet, at number four, has already donated 6.7 billion dollars, with a further pledge made in 2006 to give 30 billion dollars to the Gates foundation and to its battle for public health.

Gordon Moore, with a similar total of 6.8 billion donated, has, beyond environmental causes, dedicated himself to the more human side of things, by financing the training of doctors and nurses.  A personal motivation lies behind this particular cause: his wife Betty almost died from an erroneous injection administered to her in hospital.

Michael Dell, the billionaire who bottoms the list with a mere 1.2 billion dollars, has dedicated his money to combating child obesity.

Meanwhile, other co-givers on the list have poured their money into medical research.  Eli Broad, the insurance magnate, has financed a genomic research centre at MIT and Harvard. 

James Stower, founder of the American Century Fund Family, who was ousted from the world top 400 rich list precisely because of his donations, has created  the Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City.  The institute researches on cancer, diabetes and heart diseases.

Jointly occupying the seventh position with donations of 1.5 billion, Mister and Missus Sandler, well-known for their support of investigative journalism, have chosen to help combat illnesses most affecting the poorer segments of society, namely asthma.

The German founder of Sap, Dietmar Hopp, who is by the way, the only European along with George Soros in the eleven strong team, has looked towards children’s tumour research to place his billions.

Amongst all the causes the billionaires seem to most avidly give their billions to better the health of billions.