Janice R. Andrews
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, a new study from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation warns that global health spending has stalled. Even though many parts of the world’s economies have recovered, investments in public health have not. Concern was shown by Bill Gates in the foundation’s yearly Goalkeepers report, which said, “Twenty years of unprecedented progress followed by five years of stagnation.”
The study talks about childhood hunger as a very important problem. UNICEF says that more than 400 million children around the world are malnourished. Developing countries are having a hard time funding health programs because their debt is growing. Mark Suzman, CEO of the Gates Foundation, talked about how important health is for the economy. He said that the costs of hunger are in the “trillions of dollars” and make up big parts of the GDPs of many countries.
The foundation suggests low-cost ways to fight hunger, like multivitamins and better farming methods that make more milk. But it will be hard to get countries to back it, especially those that are having money problems after the pandemic. Suzman asked global funders to help with these efforts because many countries don’t have the money to handle these problems on their own.
The foundation will now be called the Gates Foundation instead of Melinda Gates Foundation, but its goal has not changed: to fight global health problems and find long-term answers to problems like malnutrition.
