New Delhi: With hashtag #ArrestBillGates, netizens on Sunday came down heavily on Microsoft founder Bill Gates for allegedly funding a program of testing and sterilising indigenous vaccines on tribal children in 2009 through his NGO Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF).

A report in India’s quarterly journal GreatGameIndia claimed that a Seattle-based NGO, Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH), funded by  BMGF carried out trials for  Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine on over 14,000 tribal girls (between 10-14 years) in 2009 in Khammam district of Telangana.

The report stated that 2 types of HPV vaccines– Gardasil by Merck and Cervarix by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) were used in the project which was directly funded by BMGF on the tribal girls. HPV vaccine aims to prevent cervical cancer.

The GreatGameIndia article “How Bill Gates Funded NGO PATH Killed Tribal Girls In India In Unauthorised Clinical Trials” further claimed that after vaccination, many of the participating children fell ill and seven of them died. The report published on May 25 claimed that most of the girls’ parents were unaware of the trials as they lived in government-run hostels.

Netizens React

Earlier this month, the mega-billionaire couple Bill and Melinda Gates announced they were divorcing because their 27-year marriage has “irretrievably broken”.

The financial magazine Forbes has estimated Bill Gates is worth more than $100 billion.