Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates: I am concerned about the state of healthcare funding
Gates sits down with Julie Hyman and Brian Sozzi at Davos
Microsoft (MSFT) co-founder and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation co-chair Bill Gates is concerned about declining spending on healthcare by governments and companies around the world.
"I'm a little worried," Gates said Monday in an exclusive Yahoo Finance Live interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "The world's dealing with a lot of challenges right now, and the fact that we still have 5 million children dying before the age of five — it isn't as visual, it's not like a plane crashing or a bomb hitting a building — and yet, these deaths one by one add up to that 5 million."
Don't count the Gates Foundation among the group of healthcare spending cutters.
Quite the contrary.
The Gates Foundation revealed its largest annual budget to date today, to the tune of $8.6 billion for 2024. The budget marks a 4% increase over last year and is a $2 billion improvement from 2021 spending.
The foundation added that it remains committed to increasing its annual spending to $9 billion by 2026.
A major focus for the foundation, it says, has been "reducing inequities in health by funding the development of new tools and strategies to reduce the burden of infectious diseases and the leading causes of child mortality in low-income countries."
Based on its research, the Gates Foundation says the world has cut child deaths from more than 9.3 million a year in 2000 to 4.6 million a year in 2022.
Meanwhile, deaths from malaria and HIV were cut in half during the past two decades. Wild polio, which had been paralyzing 350,000 children a year, has been reduced to only 12 cases in two countries, says the Gates Foundation.
However, Gates added, "The last few years with the pandemic, our progress [on healthcare] has plateaued."
Brian Sozzi is Yahoo Finance's Executive Editor. Follow Sozzi on Twitter/X @BrianSozzi and on LinkedIn. Tips on deals, mergers, activist situations, or anything else? Email brian.sozzi@yahoofinance.com.
