The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation pledged 1.5 billion dollars Monday to support family planning, maternal and child health and nutrition programs in developing countries.
"This new pledge will complement our spending in other areas that affect women's and children's health such as developing and delivering children's vaccines and preventing pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria and HIV/AIDS," Melinda Gates announced at the Women Deliver conference on women's health.
The grants will be paid out over the next five years, she said.
The wife of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates also pledged to personally speak with world leaders in rich and poor countries and urge them to make women's and children's issues priorities on their policymaking agenda.
The three-day Women Deliver conference was opened Monday with a keynote speech by UN Secretary Ban Ki-moon, who called on world governments to work with the United Nations to improve women's and children's health by the UN-set target date of 2015.
"We must fight for women?s health with all our resources, all the time. When we work together, we succeed," Ban said, unveiling an action plan that would unite the United Nations and world governments in an effort to "deliver for mothers and children."
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a videotaped speech delivered to a packed auditorium at the Washington Convention Center that the United States has pledged 63 billion dollars to help countries to strengthen their health systems, "with a particular focus on the health of women, newborns and children."
Among the 3,500 men and women from 140 countries at the conference are the former presidents of Chile and Ireland, Michele Bachelet and Mary Robinson, as well as actress and women's advocate Ashley Judd.
The conference attendees will call on governments and private donors to commit at least 12 billion dollars to address maternal, reproductive, and newborn health around the world.
Copyright 2010 AFP Global Edition
