Globally, women live on average Three and a half years Longer than men for various genetic, hormonal and social reasons. But women tend to Shorter “healthy span”– Years of health. Part of this is the dangers they face in pregnancy and childbirth, their lifetime discomfort, and millions of women and children die from preventable causes in poor countries.
Resolving this difference is the focus of the first major branch Bill Gates promised $200 billion Over the next two decades, improve global health through his Door Foundation. this Microsoft The co-founder announced in May that he would deploy most of his remaining huge wealth to go all out to eliminate a range of diseases that threaten the poorest in the world. He then said that he started his foundation in 2000 with his then-wife Melinda French Gates, Will close.
During an event in which STAT News in Cambridge, Massachusetts announced the initiative, Gates noted that the foundation has reduced child mortality through vaccination and used simple and inexpensive devices to measure blood loss. “Childhood deaths are progressing very well; maternal deaths are not falling as quickly as possible,” he said. “We said, ‘We really need to pursue these things.'”
Dr. Anita Zaidi, president of Gender Equality Division of the Gates Foundation, noted McKinsey’s 2021 research This found that, excluding cancer research, only 1% of medical research and development invested in female-specific conditions. As Zaidi wrote In the comments wealth Today, “Women are seriously underrepresented in clinical trials for diseases that affect men and women, so we have hardly seen the surface of understanding how women experience common diseases, such as cardiovascular disease.”
The foundation aims to use AI to diagnose and treat women and expand the use of existing technologies to enable Moonshot innovation. In wealthier countries (e.g., ultrasound that determines how pregnancy progresses), this is not possible for many women in poor countries. “In fact,” Zaidi said when announcing the foundation’s investment, “70% of women worldwide do not have access to simple ultrasound when they are pregnant.”
Even in wealthy countries like the United States, there are significant gaps in health care for women, Zaidi wrote. In North Dakota, for example, a quarter of women have to drive for more than an hour to reach the nearest birth hospital. “In 2022, approximately 2.3 million American women of childbearing age live in the ‘pregnant desert’, defined as a county without hospitals, birth centers, doctors and nurse midwives, with experience in giving birth to babies,” she wrote.
The $2.5 billion funding for R&D will focus on five areas: obstetrics and maternal immunity; maternal health and nutrition; gynecological and menstrual health; contraceptive innovation; and sexually transmitted infections. Areas where the Foundation hopes to make progress include research on the vaginal microbiome, preeclampsia and non-hormonal contraception.
Zaidi stressed that the work to be funded also has economic and business aspects: Foundation research shows that $1 investment in women’s health can lead to $3 in economic growth. “Women’s health is not just charity,” Zadi said. “It’s an investment opportunity with great scientific breakthrough potential that can help millions of women.”
Zaidi stressed that the foundation’s $2.5 billion commitment, while huge, was “just a drop in buckets.” It covers only part of future battles to protect women and their children from preventable causes of death. Funds are specifically used for research and development. Providing practical solutions to women around the world is a complex process that requires collaboration with governments, other philanthropy and companies.
“It’s really a difficult task,” said Dr. Ru-fong Joanne Cheng, Director of Women’s Health Innovation at the Foundation. “We need everyone to join in, increase the visibility of these issues, increase the fact that there is little attention to the health of more than half of the world’s population…this doesn’t happen spontaneously; it has to be intentional. It has to be intentional.”
