Bill and Melinda Gates collaborate for global health impact

On 5th May 2015, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation held a 3-day Global Partners Forum in Seattle, Washington. The event brought together more than one thousand attendees and grant recipients to reflect on their collaborative efforts aimed at reducing poverty, inequity and suffering around the world….

May 15, 2015 - Last update: February 10, 2023

The event was also a forum for the launch of a disease monitoring-and-response system across much of Africa and South Asia – the Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance (CHAMPS) network. These sites will help gather better data, faster, about how, where and why children are getting sick and dying. This data will help the global health community get the right interventions to the right children in the right place to save lives. The network will also be invaluable in providing capacity and training in the event of an epidemic, such as Ebola or SARS. The Gates Foundation plans an initial commitment of up to $75 million on the effort.

Melinda Gates emphasized that adapting approaches to more complex problems that don’t appear to so easily lend themselves to a simple, targeted strategy – like reproductive health. She has especially made this, along with empowering women and girls, a key focus of their philanthropic work noting that childbirth is the second leading cause of death for adolescent or teenage girls.

Their Magic Wands: Tackling the stubbornly massive problem of child undernutrition and empowering women

In the wrap up on the final day, moderator Arun Rath of National Public Radio, asked what they would do right now if they had a magic wand and could solve one global health problem.

Bill said he would reduce child malnutrition. The problem of child undernutrition is stubbornly massive, he said, and won’t be as easy to tackle as some other challenges.

“What I would wish for is empowered women,” Melinda said. With a wand, she would make sure every woman has access to contraceptive methods and the freedom to use them as she sees fit. But more than that, she would magically ensure that women are no longer so abused and discriminated against. “Women’s empowerment plays into all the things we’re talking about.