The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation pledged 1.5 billion dollars Monday to support family planning and nutrition programs in developing countries and prevent the deaths of women in childbirth and their young children.
"It's not that the world doesn't know how to save the 350,000 mothers and three million newborns who die every year," Melinda Gates said at the Women Deliver conference on women's health as she announced the grant, which will be disbursed over the next five years.
"It's that we haven't tried hard enough."
A significant portion of the 1.5 billion dollars will go to programs in India, Ethiopia and other countries with high rates of maternal and child mortality.
An initial grant of 94 million dollars has been made for projects in India, and 60 million dollars has gone to Ethiopia.
The grant money pledged at the conference is in addition to grants already made by the Gates Foundation for other areas that affect women's and children's health, such as the development of vaccines to fight childhood illnesses, Gates said.
"We are stepping up to make a commitment and we wanted people to understand these are new investments," Gates said.
"But this is a government issue and it's going to take large-scale government funding to make this work."
That said, the projects the grants pay for don't have to be science-heavy or eat up millions of dollars, she said.
Poor countries can help to bring improvements to women's and children's health by promoting policies as simple as teaching women in Mali about the dangers of using a nut-based emollient on their babies, or promoting breastfeeding.
"Most maternal and newborn deaths can be prevented with existing, low-cost solutions, such as basic prenatal care or educating mothers about things like the importance of keeping babies warm," said Gates.
"Countries that have made women's and children's health a priority and have invested in proven solutions are achieving amazing results."
None of the 1.5 billion dollars in the Gates Foundation grants will be used to fund abortions, said Gates, touching on a highly sensitive issue in the United States.
Copyright 2010 AFP Global Edition
