Bill Gates: 'We can eradicate polio'

The billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates is using the annual BBC Richard Dimbleby Lecture to spell out his commitment to ridding the world of polio.

In 2012, there were just 205 cases of naturally occurring poliovirus compared with 650 cases in 2011. This compares to 350,000 a quarter of a century ago.

He told BBC Breakfast that "we have so few cases that if we really intensify our efforts we will completely eradicate the disease".

There are now three countries - Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria - where transmission of the disease has never been halted compared to 125 countries in the late 1980s.