New York - Billionaires Bill Gates and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced plans on Wednesday to donate 500 million dollars to the worldwide campaign to stop people from smoking. They announced the contribution at a news conference at the headquarters of The New York Times in New York, in support of the World Health Organization (WHO) campaign to end smoking.
WHO said tobacco could kill up to a billion people in the 21st century.
The 500 million dollars pledged by Gates, former chairman of Microsoft, and Bloomberg, founder of the Bloomberg Financial News, will be a big boost to WHO, which has spent 20 million dollars a year to support its multipronged campaign, known as Mpower, to end smoking.
Bloomberg and WHO director Margaret Chan joined forces earlier this year to end tobacco use. As mayor, Bloomberg has imposed high taxes on cigarettes in New York City to persuade smokers to kick the habit, which resulted in less smoking in the city's restaurants and public places.
The Times said the Bloomberg Foundation commits to give 250 million dollars over four years on top of the 125 million dollars he already announced two years ago. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will give 125 million dollars over five years.
Bloomberg and Chan announced plans in February to strengthen the worldwide anti-smoking campaign,with the mayor contributing 2 million dollars from his foundation to underwrite the WHO campaign's printing materials.
The WHO campaign has been asking governments to drastically raise cigarette taxes, ban smoking in public places and shut down advertisements that may affect children and start anti-smoking advertisement campaign.
The campaign has concentrated on five countries with large populations of smokers: China, India, Indonesia, Russia and Bangladesh.
