All about the Impact of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Established in 2000, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation helps individuals all over the world lead healthy, productive lives. The idea for the foundation was sparked by an article about children in developing countries drinking contaminated water. It came to the couple’s attention that millions of children around the world were still dying from diseases long eradicated in the United States.
Read on to learn more about what this incredible organization has done for the world.
Image by Marc Smith | Flickr
In 2007 Warren Buffet pledged more than $30 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The Berkshire Hathaway chairman donated the majority of his fortune to the Gates Foundation to help upscale its activities, saving even more lives in the developing world.
The foundation supports the UN Millennium Development Goals.
In a 2008 speech to the UN General Assembly, Bill Gates described the Millennium Development Goals as a kind of report card by which the foundation could measure its performance.
The eight UN Millennium Development Goals have been implemented to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, promote universal primary education, and effectively form a blueprint to be adopted by all the world’s countries and leading development institutions, galvanizing efforts to meet the needs of some of the poorest communities.
The eight key objectives are:
To eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
To achieve universal primary education
To promote gender equality and empower women
To reduce child mortality
To improve maternal health
To combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
To ensure environmental sustainability
To develop a global partnership for development
Experts estimate that since their implementation in 1990, the Millennium Development Goals have effectively halved the infant mortality rate, saving the lives of around 122 million children. As Bill Gates explains, a key aspect of this has been the distribution of new vaccines, treating deadly diseases like rotavirus and pneumococcus, an objective the foundation played a critical role in advancing between 2000 and 2001 when it helped create Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.
Gavi has helped vaccinate around 50 percent of the world’s children.
Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance protects children against debilitating and life-threatening infectious diseases. Through Gavi, more than 760 million children worldwide have been vaccinated in some of the world’s poorest countries, saving over 13 million lives.
Gavi has effectively protected an entire generation of children. It is currently working to protect the next by improving access to new and underutilized vaccines for millions of vulnerable children. Gavi aims to not only transform the lives of individuals but boost the economies of low-income countries, making the world a safer place for everyone in the process.
Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance’s core partners are the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, UNICEF, the World Bank, and the World Health Organization, all of whom play a critical role in the strengthening of primary health care, bringing us closer to attaining universal health coverage and ensuring that the world’s poorest communities are not left behind.
Gavi works with organizations in the private sector, government agencies, NGOs, advocacy groups, faith-based organizations, vaccine manufacturers, technical health and research institutes, any many more partners to achieve three principal goals:
To ensure the survival of more children by driving down the incidence of debilitating and deadly diseases
To help economies thrive. As societies become healthier, they become more stable, and citizens are better able to contribute to economic prosperity.
To improve worldwide health security. In the face of significant global challenges, such as climate change, conflict, urbanization, and human migration, Gavi helps countries improve their health systems and broaden vaccine coverage. This makes developing countries less vulnerable to disease outbreaks, effectively protecting both their citizens and countries all over the world.
Since its founding, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has pledged $10 billion to public health organizations.
As well as providing critical funding to Gavi, the foundation has also made generous donations to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria; the Global Polio Eradication Initiative; and the Global Financing Facility, an organization that focuses on mother and child health.
Bill and Melinda Gates have given $53.8 billion in charitable donations.
As the couple writes, “philanthropy takes risks that government can’t and corporations won’t.” The Gates Foundation focuses its efforts on two objectives: global health and education in the US.
In fact, thanks to their work with Gavi, the cost of one key vaccine has been driven down by more than 70 percent. Although we still have far to go in terms of eradicating disease in developing nations, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has created huge leaps in health care and improving the prospects of individuals living in some of the world’s most underdeveloped communities.
