He announced the contribution while delivering a speech as a featured speaker at the World Health Organization's annual assembly on Monday.
Gates is exploring some ideas to further the crusade against those diseases like vaccines that don't need refrigeration, easy-to-use devices to detect life-threatening fevers and drugs that attack diseases hiding from the immune system.
That's how he wants to "step up the focus on the diseases that afflict poorer nations." ''The idea of hiring very smart people and getting them to take on very optimistic goals and finding partners and believing in science -- that's very similar to the work I do at Microsoft," AFP quoted Gates as saying.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the charitable organization run by Gates and his wife Melinda, reportedly contributed more than $4 billion to global health.
Gates is of the view that ''by acting now you could have such a dramatic effect on this generation and future generations, " reported the news agency.
