Here is the record balance sheet of the Gates Foundation
While health funding for lower-income countries is declining overall, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is announcing a record budget and plans to spend more this year than ever before. Facts, numbers and insights
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation plans to spend $8.6 billion this year – more than it has ever done before – “to save and improve lives.” The announcement comes as health funding for lower-income countries has struggled, particularly since the pandemic.
THE RECORD BUDGET OF THE GATES FOUNDATION
The 2024 budget approved by the Gates Foundation's board of directors, we read in a note , is an increase of 4% compared to last year and is $2 billion higher than that of 2021.
While overall aid spending has stabilized, sub-Saharan African countries saw a decline of nearly 8% in 2022, despite facing growing needs and shrinking budgets due to debt and other financial pressures.
The Gates Foundation, notes Reuters , is already one of the main financiers of global health and, "due to its undue influence", has faced various criticisms but last year the director general, Mark Suzman, declared that the body would not he could hold back until others came forward. And, therefore, it has committed to increasing annual spending to $9 billion by 2026.
“We cannot talk about the future of humanity without talking about the future of health,” declared Bill Gates, who started the Foundation in 2000 together with his then wife Melinda, who still collaborates with him, with the aim of fighting major inequalities in the world through programs that address gender equality, agricultural development and public education.
THE RESULTS OBTAINED WITH THE FUNDING
Also thanks to donations from the Gates Foundation, important goals have been achieved in the world such as the reduction of child deaths from over 9.3 million per year in 2000 to 4.6 million per year in 2022. But also deaths from malaria and HIV have been halved in the past two decades and wild-type polio, which paralyzed 350,000 children a year, has been reduced to just 12 cases in two countries.
THOUSANDS OF PREVENTABLE DEATHS
However, much remains to be done . As the Foundation pointed out, despite great progress, millions of children in poor countries still die before their fifth birthday due to preventable or treatable diseases, and almost 300,000 women die in childbirth while the tools exist to avoid it.
“Every day babies and young children die simply because of where they were born. Mothers die giving birth, leaving families devastated. This keeps me up at night,” Gates said. “It is unacceptable, especially since we have already developed many of the solutions that could save their lives. Building a stronger, more stable world starts with good health."
Another example: even if today there is a highly effective vaccine, 90% of the 340,000 women who die every year from cervical cancer live in low- and middle-income countries. That's why, according to the Foundation, by adequately funding innovations currently in research and development, maternal deaths in lower-income countries could be reduced by 40% by the end of the decade, as well as preventable infant deaths.
LIFE SAVERS ACCORDING TO THE GATES FOUNDATION
As proof that a big difference can already be made with the tools and science available, Bill Gates and other members of the Foundation who will be present at the World Economic Forum in Davos, which begins today, will show up with a backpack containing simple products healthcare that could save millions of lives.
Among them: a package of tools that can save 65,000 women by 2030 from dying from postpartum hemorrhage, which is the leading cause of maternal death worldwide; a single-dose HPV vaccine; patches capable of administering vaccines through the skin without traditional needles, not requiring a cold chain and without the need for a highly trained healthcare worker; test strips that reduce production and shipping costs compared to existing tests; micronutrient supplements for pregnant women.
And, finally, also an ultrasound that uses artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to identify obstetric risk in pregnancy. Gates will speak about the potential of AI in health more broadly at the event.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/sanita/il-bilancio-record-della-fondazione-gates/ on Mon, 15 Jan 2024 13:56:47 +0000.