2024-01-15 07:22:55
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation plans to spend a record $8.6 billion this year as health financing falters in lower-income countries following the Covid-19 pandemic.
The 2024 budget approved by the Foundation’s Board of Directors is four percent higher than last year and two billion dollars more than in 2021.
The Foundation said in a statement that global health budgets are declining in general, and contributions to health in low-income countries are at a standstill.
The Gates Foundation is already a major funder in the global health sector and has faced criticism for its outsized influence, but CEO Mark Suzman said last year that it might not step back until others emerged, with plans to spend $9 billion annually by 2026.
Bill Gates, the technology billionaire who founded the foundation in 2000 with his then-wife Melinda, who still works with him in this foundation, said, “We cannot talk regarding the future of humanity without talking regarding the future of health.”
The Gates Foundation has long focused on innovation in health care, and the new funding aims to, among other things, facilitate access to more new technologies for the world’s most vulnerable people.
Gates and other foundation executives plan to carry backpacks at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, which begins Monday, to showcase simple health products that might save the lives of millions, from vaccine patches to an ultrasound tool powered by artificial intelligence. Gates will also talk regarding the potential of artificial intelligence in health more broadly at the event.
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