Gates Fears Pressure On Health Aid
Bill Gates has warned that growing donor sup-port for climate change threatens thousands of lives in the developing world by squeezing out funding for health.
In an annual letter released Sunday through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Gates expresses caution over the 100 billion US dollar (520 milliarder DKR) in extra pledges by rich countries made to the developing world by 2020 at December’s Copenhagen climate summit.
Gates said that amount represents more than three quarters of foreign aid currently given by the richest countries per year. “If just 1 percent of the 100 billion goal came from vaccine funding, then 700.000 more children could die from preventable diseases”, Gates noted, adding:
“Taking the focus away from health aid could be bad for the environment in the long run, because improve-ments in health, including voluntary family planning, lead people to have smaller families, which in turn redu-ces the strain on the environment”.
Nearly seven pages of the letter focus on the foundation’s work in global health and repeatedly Gates admits the work to reach the foundation’s ambitious goals is harder than they expected.
Vaccine development is progressing, but the cost to provide those vaccines to the poor is still a problem. It is going to be difficult to meet a six-year goal to get the retrovirus vaccine to more than half the kids who need it.
Kilde: www.worldbank.org
