Philanthropist Bill Gates has mocked Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi over spending money on a hair transplant rather than for foreign aid, Press Trust of India reports.
“Dear Silvio, I am sorry to make things difficult for you, but you are ignoring the poor people of the world,” Gates, who co-chairs the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, told German daily Frankfurter Rundschau.
“Rich people spend a lot more money on their own problems, like baldness, than they do to fight malaria,” Gates told another German daily, S’ddeutsche Zeitung.
Italy’s aid in 2009 amounted to 0.11 percent of the country’s gross domestic product last year, compared to 0.21 percent in 2008.
