I’m making this investment on my own, not through the foundation. The first Alzheimer’s treatments might not come to fruition for another decade or more, and they will be very expensive at first. Once that day comes, our foundation might look at how we can expand access in poor countries.
It's intriguing they're able to draw that line, but it makes sense if they want to keep the Gates Foundation focused.
As a rule when children normally live to adulthood population growth halts soon after.
There are countries that do worse, but even in the most underdeveloped, war ravaged hell-holes in the world living past 5 is not an anomaly - as of 2012 even in sub-Saharan Africa the under 5 mortality rate was down below 100 per 1000 (though still awful - compare with 6 per 1000 for the most developed countries and a world average of 48), and even the very worst - Sierra Leone - was at 234 out of a 1000. Only a handful of countries are anywhere near 200, and only 16 above 100.
I agree with your overall point about focus, but exaggerating is not useful.
It has been a disappointment to see the Gates Foundation near entirely bypass this area of research up to fairly recently, presumably because they do hold this strange view of aging being either a non-issue, or a problem of wealthy regions.
From a utilitarian perspective, nothing that goes on in the poorest parts of the world rises to the level of harm done by age-related disease. Not even close.
There is no danger that aging will be overlooked.