The Future of Health: Gates Foundation spearheads 11th-hour campaign to lift people out of poverty

16 Jan 2024 --- The Gates Foundation is increasing its annual philanthropic budget to US$8.6 billion amid a considerable slump in aid funding to activate health innovations to save lives by 2030. A major focus of the foundation is on reducing inequities in health by funding the development of tools and strategies to alleviate the burden of infectious diseases and the causes of child deaths in low-income countries.

Bill Gates is currently showcasing innovations to heal sick women and children through the foundation’s “The Future of Health” event, currently taking place at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. Gates advocates using AI and other technologies to help transform people’s health in underdeveloped countries. 

“An investment in global health is an investment in our future. When the world puts money behind proven solutions, it builds stronger, healthier and more resilient communities for generations to come. With low-income countries facing a whole host of challenges, now is the right time to recommit to saving lives and improving livelihoods,” says Melinda French Gates, co-chair of the Gates Foundation. 

The foundation estimates that if innovations currently in the R&D pipeline are adequately funded, they could help cut maternal deaths by 40% in the lowest-income countries by the end of the decade and drive down preventable child deaths.

Life-saving backpack
Foundation affiliates are sporting “The Future of Health” backpacks to emphasize that many solutions to poverty and disease alleviation are simple, portable and available. The package features tools that can help save the 65,000 women estimated to die of postpartum hemorrhage, the leading cause of maternal death worldwide.

The toolkit includes a simple and inexpensive drape to measure blood loss, which can reduce severe bleeding by 60% compared to trial interventions. A one-dose HPV vaccine can help against this common form of cancer among women. 

Millions of girls in low- and middle-income countries have not received HPV vaccines, while many in high-income countries have. Data modeling shows that more than 110 million cases of cervical cancer can be averted if a one-dose regimen is rolled out.

“We can’t talk about the future of humanity without talking about the future of health. Every day, newborn babies and young children die simply because of where they were born. Mothers die giving birth, leaving families devastated. That keeps me up at night. It’s unacceptable, particularly because we have already developed many of the solutions that could save their lives. Building a stronger, more stable world starts with good health,” says Bill Gates, co-chair of the Gates Foundation. 

The toolkit includes an AI-enabled ultrasound that uses algorithms to identify obstetric risk in pregnancy. According to the foundation, this tool can save 390,000 infant lives by helping health workers identify high-risk pregnancies in low-resource settings. 

Vaccine microneedle array patches can deliver vaccines through the skin without traditional needles or require a highly trained health worker to administer them. Early trials show these patches have the measles-rubella vaccine as safely as syringes, produce a similar immune response and can help protect the hardest-to-reach children.A simple toolkit has been assembled that can prevent and treat disease (Credit: VCU Massey Cancer Center).

The diagnostic test strips can be produced by the billions and shipped inexpensively, allowing for faster response in the event of an outbreak. They can also increase the number of tests available for diagnosing malaria, of which two-thirds of cases go undiagnosed.

The kit also includes micronutrient supplements that restore a pregnant woman’s nutrient stores that she transfers to her baby. Studies show that supplements reduce the risk of low birth weight and the risk of preterm birth. It also demonstrated improved results among anemic and underweight women. The supplements could prevent around 425,000 stillbirths.

Late last year, the World Food Programme (WFP) cautioned that more than one million children in South Sudan are likely to face extreme levels of malnutrition in the first half of 2024 as a result of floods caused by climate change.

Preventable outcomes
The foundation’s incremental resources for 2024 — financial and human — will prioritize polio eradication, scale child azithromycin delivery in the highest mortality regions, improve digital courseware in postsecondary education and accelerate the global TB drug portfolio.

The Gates Foundation budget, which is an increase of 4% from 2023 and US$2 billion more than 2021, comes at a time when global contributions for health in low-income countries are at the lowest they have been. 

Meanwhile, the African Bank Development Group arranged an event where African leaders called for “more commitment and accountability in efforts to achieve continental and global goals for nutrition, ahead of the 2025 World Health Assembly Nutrition target deadline.”

The foundation has committed to increasing its annual spending to US$9 billion by 2026. Overall, aid spending has leveled off, and sub-Saharan African countries experienced an 8% decline in aid. The situation is exacerbated due to debt and other financial pressures. 

Taking stock of the progress that has been made, the foundation reports that child deaths were lessened from 9.3 million a year in 2000 to 4.6 million a year in 2022. Deaths from malaria and HIV were cut in half during the past two decades. Wild polio, which paralyzed 350,000 children annually, was reduced to 12 cases in two countries.

However, despite progress, millions of children in low-income countries still die before their fifth birthday of preventable or treatable diseases, and nearly 300,000 women die in childbirth. At the same time, the tools exist to prevent their deaths. About 90% of women in underdeveloped countries die of cervical cancer even though there is a one-dose vaccine that can protect them.

“The Gates Foundation measures impact in terms of lives saved and opportunities provided to the poorest. This new high-water mark for our budget will further our mission to help create a world where everyone has the opportunity to live a healthy, productive life,” says Mark Suzman, CEO of the Gates Foundation.

In addition, scientists presented the eXtreme Gradient Boosting algorithm — a machine learning technique to forecast food insecurity 30 days in advance for countries with insufficient food consumption. The researchers from the Central European University, Austria, use data from the WFP and argue that the tool might help prevent food insecurity.

By Inga de Jong