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Gates gave away $4.6 billion in Microsoft shares in June to his personal charity, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, according to a filing published Monday by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Bloomberg first reported the gift late Monday. Then, on Tuesday, Gates unveiled a new campaign to combat the spread of malaria. His pitch: the Gates Foundation will donate a mosquito net for every person who reads his latest blog post and takes a subsequent quiz.
Dubbed “Mosquito Wars,” the campaign is part of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s broader effort to combat malaria. Each donated net will go to families in the Inhambane region of Mozambique, where the disease is still prevalent, and will be distributed by nonprofit World Vision.
In addition to distributing insecticide-treated bed nets, the Gates Foundation is also seeking to educate the public about the fight against malaria. In his post, Gates wrote about the significant progress that has already been made on that front. Since 2000, the number of people killed by malaria each year has fallen by half, an achievement he calls “miraculous,” though he points out that 429,000 people still died from the disease last year.