The Founder of Microsoft and the Co-Chair, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), Mr Bill  Gates says it will be a tragedy, if a country continues to have an epidemic due to false vaccine rumours.

Gates made the assertion on Tuesday night during a virtual press conference with selected African journalists ahead of the launch of the 2021 Bill and Melinda Gates Annual Letters.

According to him, people who care about childhood death knew that vaccines were the best thing that ever happened.

“Smallpox killed over a million people a year, and because of vaccines, now smallpox is gone.

“The miracle of vaccines is very clear. When a child dies, that’s a very clear thing. We have very good statistics on what that was like before we got these new vaccines.

“Over 10 million children were dying under the age of five every year, with a high portion of those being in Africa.

“The more people learn about vaccines, the more amazed they should be about how fantastic they are,” he said.

The philanthropist noted that the safety issues involved in vaccines development were challenging considering the trials and need to use extremely well regulated factories.

“A factory can only be built in a country whose regulator is a good standard regulator and can look at every aspect of that factory,

making sure that it’s very very good.

“There are very few countries that have that safety review capacity that the world trusts,” he said.

Speaking on his COVID-19 vaccination experience, Gates said that he got his first dose of the vaccine last week.

“There are very, very few side effects, and it is protecting people.