Impatient Optimists
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Authors / Biography

Louis Boorstin

Title Deputy Director, Water, Sanitation, & Hygiene
Organization Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Louis Boorstin is the deputy director of Water, Sanitation, & Hygiene at the foundation.

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Posts By Louis Boorstin

When It Comes to Toilets, the Customer is Queen

February 10, 2012 / Louis Boorstin

Two recent videos from partners in the sanitation business illustrate a key shift in thinking in the field: households that lack sanitation are customers, not beneficiaries.

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Tackling the Rural Sanitation Challenge

September 15, 2011 / Louis Boorstin

What will it take for all people in rural areas to have affordable access to safe, dignified sanitation that they really want to use?

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The Problem That Nobody Wants to Think About

November 19, 2010 / Louis Boorstin

I suspect that few people in Haiti are aware that today is World Toilet Day. But the slum dwellers in Port-au-Prince are keenly aware that cholera has descended on their communities.

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  • "Our desire to bring every good thing to our children is a force for good throughout the world. It’s what propels societies forward." —Melinda Gates

  • The Global Fund has helped to deliver more than 190 million bed nets to protect families from malaria.

  • "The world faces a clear choice. If we invest relatively small amounts, many more poor farmers will be able to feed their families." —Bill Gates, 2012 Annual Letter

  • "When it come to global health, Bill and I are optimists—but we're impatient optimists. Tremendous progress is being made. But there is still so much we're impatient to see done." —Melinda French Gates

  • In Senegal, 80% of households now have a bed net, helping the number of malaria cases there drop 50% in a single year.

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