Qatar on Wednesday announced a $50mn donation to "The Lives and Livelihood Fund", a partnership initiative between the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Islamic Development Bank (IDB).

The money has been donated by Doha through the Qatar Development Fund (QDF), a public body which distributes foreign aid.

“Qatar’s donation will enable the fund to begin its work of providing affordable financing for the 30 least-wealthy countries among IDB members,” world’s richest man and IT giant Microsoft founder Bill Gates said in Doha, the AFP news agency reported.

“This is a great milestone for helping the poorest,” the billionaire philanthropist and co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation said while recalling that Qatar had always been very generous as a donor.

The fund is trying to raise $2.5bn in total, in order to address poverty and diseases among some of the world’s poorest people through grants and Sharia-compliant loans over a period of five years.

The grant agreement was signed by QDF director general Khalifa bin Jassim al-Kuwari, IDB president Dr Ahmad Mohamed Ali al-Madani and Gates in the presence of HE the Assistant Foreign Minister for Foreign Affairs, Sultan bin Saad al-Meraikhi.

Al-Kuwari expressed pleasure to contribute $50mn “as the beginning of this innovative and pilot project, which will support millions of people to get out of poverty in the Islamic countries in dire need of help, by developing primary healthcare, disease control, smallholder agriculture and basic rural infrastructure,” the official Qatar News Agency (QNA) reported.

“We aim to reach the 30 least developed countries in the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation in Asia and Africa,” he said, while pointing out that Qatar believed that human development, healthcare, education and the agricultural sector played a big role in the activation of the production process in developing countries.

IDB president al-Madani said help would go to those in war-torn regions, where possible. “We try as much as we can to help the countries that suffer from conflicts depending on conditions,” he added.

QDF is a public development institution, committed, on behalf of Qatar to improving the livelihood of communities around the world.

Speaking in Doha at the official announcement of Qatar’s donation to “The Lives and Livelihood Fund”, Gates said that “with any luck” polio would be eradicated by 2017 in the last two countries where it remained active, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

“There’s very few cases left, just two countries at this point, Pakistan and Afghanistan, and with any luck either this year or next year we will have the last cases of those,” Gates said.

Pakistan has already made it an official target to rid the country of polio - an infectious viral disease resulting in muscle damage - in 2016 though there have already been eight recorded cases so far this year.

Although these are the two countries where the disease remains endemic, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative calculates eight countries are “vulnerable” to the virus, including Cameroon, South Sudan and Syria.

Gates is also well-known for his work in trying to combat malaria.

Earlier this year he announced the launch of a $4bn fund to help eradicate malaria, which he called the “world’s biggest killer”.