NEW DELHI: A 2015 video of Microsoft founder Bill Gates where he had predicted that the world would struggle to cope with a "highly infectious virus" has resurfaced as the world battles with the outbreak of novel coronavirus The address came in 2015, during a Ted Conference at the time of Ebola outbreak in West Africa.In his address, Gates had warned that the next outbreak could be "much worse"."The world is simply not prepared to deal with a disease—an especially virulent flu, for example—that infects large numbers of people very quickly. Of all the things that could kill 10 million people or more, by far the most likely is an epidemic," he said.The Microsoft founder asserted that a by building a "global warning and response system for pandemics" such an outbreak can be prevented."It would apply the kind of planning that goes into national defence—systems for recruiting, training, and equipping health workers; investments in new tools; etc.—to the effort to prevent and contain outbreaks," he said during his address.Last month, philanthropist Bill Gates had urged wealthy nations to help low and middle-income countries strengthen their health systems in hopes of slowing the spread of the coronavirus, which Gates said has started to behave like a "once-in-a-century" pathogen.“By helping countries in Africa and South Asia get ready now,” we can save lives and also slow the global circulation of this virus,” Gates wrote in an editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine in February.The novel coronavirus which was first detected in the Chinese province of Wuhan last year has so far claimed over 5,000 lives and infected over 140,000 people.