By Bill Gates
Copyright time
The choices they make now—whether to go forward with proposed steep cuts to health aid, or to give the world’s children the chance they deserve to live a healthy life—will determine what kind of future we leave the next generation.
To save as many children as possible, I’m urging leaders to increase health funding. But say they simply sustained current levels. What would happen? Our foundation worked with the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington to find out—and the results were more hopeful than I expected.
If the world invests in child health and scales lifesaving innovations, we could cut child deaths in half again over the next 20 years.
We have a road map to get there. We know how to stretch every dollar to save the most lives. And the pipeline of affordable health innovation is stronger than ever before.
A suite of new approaches to malaria, including innovations that prevent mosquitoes from carrying parasites, could all but eradicate the disease. New maternal vaccines can protect babies from respiratory diseases, which are the biggest killers of newborns. And long-acting HIV treatments and prevention options that replace daily pills can drive AIDS deaths to single digits. With the right level of investment and focus, it’s possible that HIV/AIDS, once the world’s deadliest pandemic, could become a medical footnote.
