On August 19, Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft and now a philanthropist for diseases and poverty around the world, visited a museum in Meguro, Tokyo, dedicated to parasites.

The Meguro Parasitological Museum, which interested him, was founded in 1953 by a medical doctor who invested his private funds and creativity in a museum dedicated to the study of parasites and the threat of parasitic diseases. 

The museum has been free for admission since it was established. They run on basic assets and donations. However, the Corona disaster had halved the number of visitors, and the business was hit hard.

As soon as Bill Gates posted on Twitter, “Today, I experienced the Meguro Parasitological Museum in Tokyo, and saw what is believed to be the world’s longest tapeworm.”, access to the Museum’s official website flooded in from all over the world. As a result, donation through online remittance increased rapidly, and the target donation amount for this fiscal year was successfully achieved.

When I actually visited that museum, there were 20 people in the small building, including high school girls and young men, and I can’t believe so many people are interested in these parasites! Familiar to us, we can see specimens of mites, sucking insects, and roundworms.

 The night I went to the museum for an interview, I naturally had nightmares of being attacked by parasites.