1月25日，比尔·盖茨在其创立的比尔和梅琳达·盖茨基金会网站上发表了2010年度公开信，涉及范围包括科技、教育、农业、卫生领域的革新问题等。
在这封含有12个小标题的年度公开信中，盖茨将“革新”作为关键概念首先提出。他说，基金会目前正着手进行约30个革新项目，其中包括网络教育、教师培训、疟疾疫苗开发、防控艾滋病以及转基因植物研究等。他认为把资金运用到科学技术革新中更具实际意义。
他在信中多次承认，改善全球公共卫生状况比预想的要困难得多。尽管疫苗开发取得了一定成果，但要满足所有贫困地区人们的需求，仍需解决资金问题，因此基金会很难达到其预想的在6年内为全球半数有需要的儿童提供抗病毒疫苗的目标。
盖茨还承认，“疟疾本身是一种非常难治的疾病”，而真正有效的疟疾疫苗投入使用可能还需要8至15年时间。
此外，盖茨还对基金会未涉足气候变化问题做了解释。他认为，开发电力等清洁能源是解决气候变化问题的关键，而基金会还没有决定应该从何处着手作出自己的贡献。在应对气候变化的国际合作问题上，盖茨担心各国对这一问题投入巨资，会导致公共卫生投入有所减少，尤其是发达国家对发展中国家的公共卫生援助的减少，将会使本可挽救的许多生命白白丧失。
比尔和梅琳达·盖茨基金会是美国最大的慈善基金会，创立于1994年，主要投入方向是全球卫生、农业发展和教育。（生物谷Bioon.com）
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2010 Annual Letter from Bill Gates: Introduction
This is my second annual letter. The focus of this year’s letter is innovation and how it can make the difference between a bleak future and a bright one.
2009 was the first year my full-time work was as co-chair of the foundation, along with Melinda and my dad. It’s been an incredible year and I enjoyed having lots of time to meet with the innovators working on some of the world’s most important problems. I got to go out and talk with people making progress in the field, ranging from teachers in North Carolina to health workers fighting polio in India to dairy farmers in Kenya. Seeing the work firsthand reminds me of how urgent the needs are as well as how challenging it is to get all the right pieces to come together. I love my new job and feel lucky to get to focus my time on these problems.
The global recession hit hard in 2009 and is a huge setback. The neediest suffer the most in a downturn. 2009 started with no one knowing how long the financial crisis would last and how damaging its effects would be. Looking back now, we can say that the market hit a bottom in March and that in the second half of the year the economy stopped shrinking and started to grow again. I talked to Warren Buffett, our co-trustee, more than ever this year to try to understand what was going on in the economy.
Although the acute financial crisis is over, the economy is still weak, and the world will spend a lot of years undoing the damage, which includes lingering unemployment and huge government deficits and debts at record levels. Later in the letter I’ll talk more about the effects of these deficits on governments’ foreign aid budgets. Despite the tough economy, I am still very optimistic about the progress we can make in the years ahead. A combination of scientific innovations and great leaders who are working on behalf of the world’s poorest people will continue to improve the human condition.
