While reflecting on the 25 years since its inception, Bill Gates announced that, contrary to initial plans of continuing on after his death, the Gates Foundation will close its doors in 2045, increasing its funding to $200bn. “I will give away virtually all my wealth through the Gates Foundation over the next 20 years to the cause of saving and improving lives around the world,” he says.
In a blog post on the Gates Foundation website, he looked back at how the foundation made significant strides in improving global healthcare efforts – from the Gavi and the Global Fund saving more than 80 million lives through the procurement and delivery of vaccines and antiretrovirals to partnering with Rotary International to eradicate polio and aiding in the development of a new rotavirus vaccine, reducing the number of children who die from diarrhoea each year by 75%.
Looking to the future, he plans on amplifying the foundation’s efforts to improve the lives of people around the world with an emphasis on three areas: preventable child mortality, the eradication of deadly infectious diseases and alleviating poverty.
The rate of global child mortality (under the age of five) has significantly decreased since 1990 from 12 million children to five million in 2020. Gates believes that through global efforts, this number could be further reduced and completely eviscerated, saying: “The innovation is there, the ability to measure progress is stronger than ever, and the world has the tools it needs to put all children on a good path.”
Therefore, one of the foundation’s key focuses is ending all preventable child deaths. “We’ve made huge advances in maternal health, making sure that new and expectant mothers have the support they need to deliver healthy babies. We have new, life-saving vaccines and medicines, and we know how to get them to the people who need them most thanks to organisations like Gavi and the Global Fund,” says Gates.
Additionally, the foundation will be making more contributions to eradicating deadly infectious diseases, with Gates expressing his optimism about wiping out polio, Guinea worm, measles and even malaria. “Malaria is particularly tricky, but we’ve got lots of new tools in the pipeline, including ways of reducing mosquito populations. That is probably the key tool that, as it gets perfected and approved and rolled out, gives us a chance to eradicate malaria,” he muses.
He also pointed out the progress made in the treatment and prevention of HIV/Aids, which has seen the mortality rate decrease from 1.8 million people in 2001 to 630,000 in 2023. Innovations like single-shot gene therapy – which can suppress the virus 10,000-fold for months – have played a key role in this progress.
His outlook on TB is also positive given the phrase three trials of the M72/AS01E vaccine, which, if effective, will be the first TB vaccine in a century. The trial – currently being conducted in South Africa, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Kenya, Indonesia, and Vietnam – is evaluating if the M72/AS01E vaccine can protect older adolescents and adults from pulmonary tuberculosis.
Moreover, Gates also plans on alleviating poverty around the world, saying: “It's unclear whether the world’s richest countries will continue to stand up for its poorest people. But the one thing we can guarantee is that, in all of our work, the Gates Foundation will support efforts to help people and countries pull themselves out of poverty.” These efforts span key focus areas, including education, food security, digital infrastructure, and gender equality.
Firstly, it plans on tackling the education gap. The foundation plans on prioritising students from low-income backgrounds as well as Black and Latino students in the US, ensuring that teachers are well-trained in math instruction and granting them access to new AI tools. The foundation will also fund initiatives to increase graduation rates.
In addressing the world hunger crisis, the foundation plans on developing more resilient seeds that yield more crops under harsh conditions. Gates says that he’s “hopeful that we can help make smallholder farmers more productive than ever over the next two decades. Some of the crops our partners are developing even contain more nutrients – a win-win for both climate adaptation and preventing malnutrition.”
Gates also outlined plans for the foundation’s continued support of digital public infrastructure, new uses of AI and gender equality.
While Gates is encouraged by African governments’ efforts to step in and find solutions to cuts in foreign funding, he urges the world superpowers to reconsider their current stance, uttering: “Many African countries are spending so much money servicing their debts that they cannot invest in the health of their own people – a vicious cycle that makes economic growth impossible.”
Robin Fredericks 4 hours
Yuneal Padayachy 3 hours
