They do not run good times for development aid. The United States government has almost completely closed its international cooperation agency, USAID, the largest in the world. Philanthropy is found in low times. Billionaario Bill Gates, one of the richest men in the world, wanted to try a drastic turn to this trend with a blunt ad The planned.
In a letter disseminated by the Gates Foundation, the philanthropist reveals that, during its first 25 years in operation, the fund distributed about 100,000 million. That money was destined for causes such as the development of new vaccines, research in innovative therapies and the prevention of deaths worldwide for avoidable diseases. In the next two decades “we will fold that amount,” says the billionaire. “People will say a lot of things about me when they die, but I am determined that they can’t say ‘Rico died,” he adds. “There are too many urgent problems to solve to cling to resources that can be used to help people.”
Gates wants to accelerate the work of the foundation and collaboration with other partners for the benefit of world health and equality, hoping that this work will serve as an example to other billionaires. As he remembers, when he and his then wife Melinda French Gates established the entity a quarter of a century ago, the idea that guided them was the conviction that the place where a person is born should not mark their future or their possibilities of living a healthy and full life. In 2010 he launched, together with French Gates and also the billionaire Warren Buffet, the Giving Folding initiative (promise to give) to encourage the very rich donating most of their fortunes to beneficial causes. More than 240 people have signed that commitment.
“We will work with our partners to achieve the greatest possible progress for a more equitable world. The truth is that there has never been more opportunities to help people live healthier and more prosperous lives. Advances in technology are occurring more quickly than ever, especially given the rise of artificial intelligence,” writes the technological billionaire. “Despite the challenges that the world faces, I am optimistic about our ability to achieve progress, because every advance is an opportunity to improve someone’s life.”
Throughout the next two decades, the Foundation will concentrate on three key causes, according to its creator. The first will be to avoid maternal or children’s deaths due to preventable causes: in 2019 five million children under five years old died, and cut more than half with respect to the 1990 figures, when they reached twelve million. Gates aspires to reduce them at least half of the current ones.
The Foundation will also work to eradicate infectious diseases. Until now, world collaboration has managed to eliminate only one, smallpox. “In the next two years I aspire to add the polio and Guinea’s worm to the list,” says the philanthropist, who adds that by 2045 he hopes that he could also end malaria and measles. Likewise, the incidence of AIDS – his entity collaborates for the development of a single injection therapy that “could reduce to such an extent the levels of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that you would effectively be cured” – or tuberculosis: “Last year there began phase 3 in the development of a vaccine that could be the first new one in more than a century against that disease”
Another priority will be the elimination of poverty and the promotion of equality through access to education, the promotion of quality agriculture that allows adequate nutrition, and access to social and financial services.
In his letter, Gates raises his concern for the cuts of the governments of developed countries to his help to cooperation, worth tens of billions of dollars. “No organization, not even one of the size of the Gates Foundation, can cover the hole that is being created in the available funds. The reality is that we will not eradicate the polio without funds from the United States.”
In an interview granted to the Financial Times newspaper and simultaneously published to his announcement, the billionaire attacks against the one who is now the richest man in the world, the technological oligarch Elon Musk, which he accuses of “killing the poorest children of the planet” when Doge, the entity in his charge for the cut of federal expenditure, decided the elimination of USAID and other federal funds of international aid.
As an example, the cancellation of the funds to supply retroviral medications to the mothers infected with HIV in the province of Gaza, in Mozambique, after Doge confused that place with the Gaza Strip and the medications, with condoms. “I would love to be and see the children who have now been infected with HIV as a result of their decision,” Gates emphasizes.
