BILL GATES hailed a new partnership with South Korea to “eradicate infectious diseases” today — but public health campaigners warned the US tycoon’s market model was part of the problem.

The Microsoft founder addressed legislators in Seoul, calling for stronger international co-operation to develop new vaccines.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and South Korea’s government had proved good partners in developing Covid vaccines, he said.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) announced a biomanufacturing training hub in South Korea to help poorer countries develop production capacity earlier this year.

But the WHO has been criticised for aligning policy with Mr Gates’s priorities — he is its largest private donor, donating $780 million (£644m) last year, the second highest contribution overall after Germany’s, higher than the total funding from the US government.

“More international co-operation to tackle infectious disease is long overdue, but Bill Gates has a history of promoting market-based solutions — not least during the Covid-19 pandemic,” Global Justice Now’s pharma campaigns officer Alena Ivanova told the Morning Star.

“The heart of the problem is the system of patent monopolies that help companies convert publicly funded scientific research into enormous private profits — we’re currently seeing another example of how this model limits supply and prioritises the richest countries first with the monkeypox vaccine.”

Pharmaceutical giants Moderna and Pfizer have declined appeals from the WHO to share their vaccine formulas so a new production hub in South Africa can reproduce them.

Mr Gates was criticised in 2020 for putting pressure on Oxford University — to whose research programmes he is also a major donor — to break pledges to place a vaccine it was developing in the public domain and instead allow it to be patented by the AstraZeneca pharmaceutical firm.

“Instead of limited public-private partnerships, Bill Gates and others should be backing radical measures to promote open sharing of research, technology and know-how for the global public good. We need a vastly different pharmaceutical system which puts human lives first,” Ms Ivanova said.

South Korea has also been condemned by health campaigners for joining Britain, Germany and the European Union in blocking efforts to get a vaccine patent waiver passed by the World Trade Organisation to allow global South countries to start mass production of Covid-19 vaccines.