Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Often the picture painted in the media of Africa, and global poverty more generally, is pretty negative yet that’s a bit misleading as that’s not the whole story …
Mark Suzman, acting president of the Global Development Program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, wrote about this for the Huffington Post earlier this month. I just wanted to draw attention to the article as I think it sums things up nicely on where we’re at. Suzman focuses on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and argues that although there is clearly still a long way to go, there has been incredible progress made across Africa. Malawi has decreased its child mortality rate by 50 percent for example.
Suzman concludes that “as we reflect on the first decade of the Millennium Development Goals, we should celebrate how far we have come. There is a clear route to our final destination with good models for how even the poorest countries can ultimately meet each of the goals.”
There’s an important UN Summit on the MDGs in September where a roadmap will be drawn up on how to accelerate progress and meet the goals set. We’re already working hard on this here at ONE and you’ll hear more and more about this as we get closer to the New York Summit.
Gary Darmstadt of the Gates Foundation posted this amazing piece today on their new blog, Foundation Notes. I hope you’ll check it out.
As a gynecologist in Bangladesh, Dr. Ferdousi Begum saw firsthand the effects of that country’s staggering infant mortality rate.
And while she worked hard to save as many patients as possible, she knew that the poorest, most rural communities in her country needed more than she – or the limited number of other doctors like her – could provide. So she began training volunteers to provide basic care to pregnant women in their own communities. Since 2005, Dr. Begum’s dedication has had remarkable results: she has trained 3,200 volunteers, who have provided care to 300,000 women, treated 83,000 kids for pneumonia and diarrhea, and done much more.
Her efforts haven’t gone unnoticed. In 2008, Save the Children hired Dr. Begum to serve as the program manager for its Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health division. Save the Children is one of the foundation’s key partners, and we’re excited about the life-saving work they are doing, with Dr. Begum’s leadership, to deliver proven interventions and save lives in Bangladesh and other countries. Thanks to efforts like theirs, there are encouraging signs of new momentum on maternal and child health. For the first time in decades, the number of women dying from pregnancy and childbirth has dropped significantly, and child deaths continue to decline.
Here at the Gates Foundation, improving the health of mothers and young children is one of our top priorities. As Melinda Gates shared yesterday in her speech at Women Deliver, we are committed to developing and delivering solutions to ensure that mothers and their children around the world have the chance to thrive.
Learn more about Dr. Begum and Save the Children’s work in Bangladesh, in this profile by GOOD magazine.
Today, I’ve had the privilege of attending the Women Deliver Conference in DC alongside over 3,500 delegates from 140 countries. In just the few first hours of the conference, I’ve heard messages from a number of inspiring global leaders and health experts—from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Secretary Clinton to friends of ONE, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and Yvonne Chaka Chaka—all of whom spoke with intelligence and conviction about the power of women and the need to catalyze new momentum towards the achievement of MDGs 4 and 5.
But nothing spurs excitement in the midst of 3 days of speeches and panels quite like cold, hard cash-and Melinda Gates announced today that the Gates Foundation is committing $1.5 billion over the next five years to support family planning, maternal and child health, and nutrition programs in developing countries. That’s in addition to the $10 billion the Foundation just recently pledged to catalyze what they call the “Decade of Vaccines.” Talk about putting your money where your mouth is!
In the lead-up to her big announcement, Melinda spoke about her recent visit to India, where she witnessed the joyous birth of a healthy baby girl, Durga. She talked about the overwhelming sense of hope she felt, and even recalled the birth of her own three children (something she rarely discusses), but then reminded us that for too many women around the world, childbirth is a time of pain, fear, and sorrow. Then, she transitioned and reminded us that progress is also possible. On another stop in her enviable travel schedule, Melinda traveled to Malawi in January – a country that for decades languished behind others and had some of the world’s worst maternal and child mortality rates. Thanks to a combination of renewed political will and investments in immunizations and health workers, Malawi has seen a precipitous drop in the number of children that die each year, and is now on track to achieve MDG 4. Indeed, we have living proof that investments in maternal and child health are working and are saving lives.
As much as we might like to think that $1.5 billion will solve the problem, it won’t — in fact, many estimate we will need at least $12 billion annually to really “solve” needless maternal and child deaths. But the Gates Foundation’s latest commitment should lay the groundwork for the world’s biggest economies this summer as they meet in Canada to discuss—and, we hope, robustly fund—a maternal and child health initiative so that at the next Women Deliver Conference three years from now, we have more stories like Durga’s to propel us forward with hope.
Huge, huge news: Just now, at the Women Deliver conference in DC, Melinda Gates announced that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is committing $1.5 billion in grants toward maternal, newborn and child health over the next five years.
Specifically, these grants will include training frontline health care workers, introducing low-cost, effective interventions to stem newborn infections and treat birth complications, and educating mothers about simple lifesaving practices like keeping newborns warm with their body heat.
Below is an excerpt from her remarkable speech:
Today, we are committing to make new grants totaling $1.5 billion over the next five years to support family planning, maternal and child health, and nutrition programs in developing countries.
This new pledge will complement our spending in other areas that affect women’s and children’s health, such as developing and delivering children’s vaccines, and preventing pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria, and HIV/AIDS.
I’m also making women’s and children’s health my personal priority as co-chair of the Gates Foundation.
My commitment to you is that I will continue to talk to leaders in rich countries about making funding pledges and following through on them. I will continue to talk to leaders in poor countries about making women and children a policy priority.
We will continue having this conversation about the work we’re doing together. We hold the future in our hands.
ONE’s Erin Hohlfelder is at the actual conference with Melinda now and will report back more soon.
When you have a minute, check out the ViewChange Online Film Contest– online competition to find powerful new stories about the progress being made in achieving the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Over the past couple weeks they’ve been accepting short video submissions that the contest claims “will be used to raise awareness, inspire action, and accelerate the worldwide movement to reduce extreme poverty by 2015.” Professionals, novices, and everyone in between are invited to participate.
This video does a pretty good job explaining the details of the contest:
Check out ViewChange’s website here to watch submissions and learn how to submit your own video. The contest runs until August 31st.
This final in our series on “Vaccines: The Next 10 Years” comes from Tachi Yamada, President of the Gates Foundation’s Global Health Program:
When I think about what we might be able to accomplish with vaccines over the next decade, I recall my visit to a crowded clinic outside of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Children lay on rows of hospital beds, some nearly lifeless from severe diarrhea. I spoke to a little boy named Emon, who was lying on a bright orange plastic sheet with a hole in the middle and bucket underneath. He and his mother had already been there for four days.
Fortunately, extraordinary progress in vaccine development and delivery is starting to keep children like Emon healthy. Vaccines against rotavirus, which causes severe diarrhea, and pneumococcal disease, which is a top cause of death in young children in the developing world, are now available. In fact, these two vaccines alone could save lives in more than 40 developing countries by 2015.
On January 29, 2010, Bill and Melinda called for the next decade to be the Decade of Vaccines because they have seen proof that immunizing children is the best way to save lives. The foundation’s $10 billion commitment will make a difference, but it’s not at all sufficient for the task at hand. Our investment is far exceeded by the needs of national immunization programs, implementing partners, and vaccine development efforts across the globe. We hope a broad group of partners will help make this vision both a priority and a reality. I am encouraged by the enthusiasm I’ve seen so far.
Our contribution will focus on three key areas: research around new vaccines, reaching children with existing vaccines, and reinforcing the need for vaccines among key stakeholders. It is important that the foundation continue to take risks and remain flexible in meeting these goals. We plan to help:
Research and develop new vaccines:
- Discover and develop vaccines in key areas: HIV, malaria, TB, neglected diseases, and pneumonia and diarrheal diseases.
- Make vaccines easier to use by minimizing the need for refrigeration and needles
Reach poor children around the globe:
- Ensure the policies, programs and resources are in place to introduce vaccines in areas with the greatest need
- Accelerate introduction of vaccines for pneumonia and diarrhea
- Support the global strategy to eradicate polio
Reinforce the importance of vaccines:
- Increase interest and investment from governments, research organizations, manufacturing companies and the engaged public.
Bill and Melinda outlined a vision for saving 8.7 million lives during the Decade of Vaccines. If each of us plays a role, ten years from now we will be able to look back and say that we succeeded. And just as importantly, we will have set the stage to save millions more with vaccines that today have not yet been discovered.
It is only a collective effort that will help us give children like Emon everywhere a shot at life.
-Tachi Yamada, M.D., Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Coinciding with Bill Gates’ announcement of the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program with Secretary Tim Geithner, the Gates Foundation has a great new video and infographic on sweet potato farming and distribution in sub-Saharan Africa. You can check out the video below, and the infographic here.
