Gates Foundation announces budget of $8.6 bn to fund health innovations

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on Monday announced its largest annual budget of $8.6 billion for 2024, a part of which will go towards advancing health innovations.

With global health budgets in decline overall, a portion of the additional funding will go towards advancing global health innovations that will save and improve lives of some of the world's most vulnerable people, including newborn babies and pregnant women living in low-income communities, it said.

The budget, which represents an increase of 4 per cent over last year and is a $2 billion increase over the 2021 budget, comes as global contributions to health in the lowest-income countries are stalling, the foundation announced here ahead of the start of the World Economic Forum.

The foundation also committed to increasing its annual spending to $9 billion by 2026.

Since its inception in 2000, the Gates Foundation has been focused on fighting the world's greatest inequities, creating programmes that address issues such as gender equality, agricultural development, and public education.

A major focus for the foundation has been on reducing inequities in health by funding the development of new tools and strategies to reduce the burden of infectious diseases and the leading causes of child mortality in low-income countries.

Despite the phenomenal progress, millions of children in poor countries still die before their fifth birthday of preventable or treatable diseases, and nearly 300,000 women die in childbirth while the tools exist to prevent their deaths.

About 90 per cent of the 340,000 women who die every year of cervical cancer live in low and middle-income countries, even though there's now a highly effective one-dose vaccine that can protect them against it.

He will also talk about the role that artificial intelligence (AI) and other technologies can play in transforming health and improving lives of people living in low-income countries.

Gates will call on global leaders, philanthropists, CEOs, and others to help rebuild global trust and solidarity by joining together to save the most vulnerable people.

The foundation said that if innovations in the R&D pipeline are properly funded, they could help cut maternal deaths by 40 per cent in the lowest-income countries by the end of the decade, and further drive down preventable child deaths.