Gates urges investment in innovations for developing nations
pharmafile | January 25, 2012 | News story | Research and Development | AIDS, Bill Gates, Global Fund, TB, malaria
Bill Gates has called on global leaders to invest in innovations that are accelerating progress against poverty, or risk a future in which millions needlessly starve.
Gates is co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, one of the biggest funders of projects to improve health in developing countries.
The global economic crisis is causing rich nations to question their commitments to research-based aid, but Gates says these must be maintained so that the poorest can build self-sufficiency and overcome the need for aid.
There has not been a major fall in funding yet, but Gates and other leaders fear a withdrawal of money will set progress back.
In November, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria cancelled its latest funding round because of the economic crisis, citing donors’ budget problems and low interest rates. The fund will continue to support existing projects, but will award no new grants before 2014.
As well as struggling with funding, it has also been criticised for the corruption and the theft of medicines seen in some recipient countries, causing some donor countries and organisations to freeze their contributions.
Its executive director Michel Kazatchkine has now been forced step down from the role, with funders now calling for a complete overhaul of how the Fund is run.
Despite such problems, Gates says remarkable progress has been made in the developing world, and says investment must continue into projects that have made a difference for millions of the world’s poorest people.
Over the past 50 years, for example, the percentage of the population living in poverty has fallen from 40% to 15%, or about 1 billion people. Gates believes it is possible to continue the progress, but only with innovative investments in areas like helping small farmers grow more food, which is the best way to fight hunger and poverty among the poor.
“The world faces a choice. By spending a relatively little amount of money on proven solutions, we can help poor farmers feed themselves and their families and continue writing the story of a steadily more equitable world,” Gates writes in the letter. “Or we can decide to tolerate a very different world in which one in seven people needlessly lives on the edge of starvation.”
Gates argues that whether it’s fighting plant disease, treating people with AIDS, or getting a polio vaccine to a child in a remote area, modest investments make a huge difference.
“Our guiding principles for those investments are the same as for agriculture: innovation is the means, and equity is the end goal.”
Gates says new resources and expertise in rapidly growing countries like Brazil, China, and India are vital to the project, as is the growing role of the private sector in improving the lives of the poor, and ‘smart partnerships’ that can help poor countries move beyond aid.
Gates says other key priorities for the foundation in 2012, including helping to eradicate polio, supporting the fight against AIDS, improving education in the US, and improving the health of mothers and children through family planning.
The first Gates Vaccine Innovation Award recipient has also been named. Innovative health official Dr. Asm Amjad Hossain has been honoured for his success in increasing immunisation rates in two Bangladesh districts by registering pregnant women. “While it may seem like a small innovation, it shows how looking at old problems in new ways can make a profound difference,” says Gates.
One of the most notable recent successes is India’s war on polio. This month the country marked one year without identifying a single case of wild polio virus – a remarkable achievement given that just three years ago India had the highest number of polio cases in the world.
Andrew McConaghie
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