Bill Gates: 7 Million Children Die Every Year ... And That's (Relatively) Good News

Here's a sad statistic that Bill Gates shared when speaking at Microsoft a couple of weeks ago. 7 million children die every year. Still, that's a huge improvement from 2000, when 12 million children died every year.

"The majority of that reduction is new vaccines," he said. "Over the next 15 years, with the world working together, we should be able to get that number below 3 million."

That's a startling fantastic number compared to the year he was born, in 1955. Back then 20 million children a year died, he said.

Glass half empty or half full?

Here's the whole conversation, given at Microsoft last month during the company's Microsoft Research Faculty Summit.