You are right, the presence of a Gates Foundation will create that. Although, I like your example because while it is an important problem, it is also a reasonably sized and quite specific problem.

And it shows that "important" and "big" work is being done by companies that just aren't on the HN startup radar because, well, it is a different sector. I think people in the internet sector make facebook-things rather than antimalarials because they are in the internet sector.