If the pace of improvements keep up and / or pick up, 2014 is going to be a fantastic year. Bill Gates is proud of how the world improved this year. He says:

"You’re probably seeing a lot of people’s year-end lists right now, going through the best movies, books, YouTube clips, grumpy cat memes, etc. I thought I would share a different kind of list: some of the good news you might have missed," he wrote in a blog post.

Check out the summary of Gates' 2013 Good News List:
  • "We got smarter and faster at fighting polio." An outbreak in the Horn of Africa was controlled in four month and that India hasn't reported a case of polio in nearly three years.
  • "Child mortality went down—again." Half as many children died in 2012 as in 1990.
  • "The worldwide poverty rate went down—again." The poverty rate has dropped by half since 1990, the Economist reported in June. Gates adds, "I never miss an issue of the Economist, and this might be the best piece they ran this year."
  • "Rich countries re-committed to saving lives." Gates points out renewed funding commitments to the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB, and malaria.
2014 will also be very exciting. All the world's poorest countries will have access to a new vaccine called pentavalent. Gates explains what is it:
Next year it will be available in South Sudan, the last of the 73 poorest countries to introduce it. India just announced that they’ll start giving it to every child in the nation in 2014. If other countries follow India’s example, pentavalent could prevent 7 million deaths by 2020.
Just what sort of good will he be able to do next year?

He tweeted: