Microsoft founder¹ Bill Gates has told the BBC that a vaccine² for malaria³ could be just three years away.

微软创始人比尔盖茨向BBC透露，疟疾疫苗有望在三年内研制成功。

Half the world's population is exposed to malaria

Mr Gates is a key campaigner against the disease which kills a million people a year, most of them children.

Since it was formed, his foundation has spent billions of dollars in the fight against malaria疟疾，瘴气.

Just like smallpox天花, Mr Gates believes the disease can be eradicated拜托，连根拔起. As yet, there is no vaccine疫苗, but, Mr Gates says, a breakthrough is near.

"We have a vaccine that's in the last trial phase - called phase three. A partially⁵部分地，偏袒地 effective vaccine could even be available within three years, but a [...] fully⁶ effective vaccine will take five to 10 years," he told the BBC World Service's World Today programme.

The man believed to be the richest person in the world did have a warning though - he fears developed nations may plunder抢劫，掠夺 their foreign aid budgets to pay for the cost of tackling处理 climate change.

Mr Gates says this would be a mistake as aid budgets not only save lives, they also improve people's health and, in turn, that stops population growth - a key reason, he says, for global warming.

"I just want to make sure that that funding doesn't come by reducing the funds for Aids, drugs or vaccines⁸, which, after all, not only do they save lives but its this improved health that actually gets a country to reduce its population growth," he said.

"And, in the long run从长远来看, for all these environmental issues, having a population that's not growing so rapidly is what will allow us to live on a sustainable可以忍受的，持久的 basis.

"Climate change is very important, it is an issue money should go to. It just shouldn't come out of由……产生，从……出来 health aid budgets."