Gates Foundation to pledge funds for contraception

LONDON Tue Jul 10, 2012 3:02pm EDT

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates listens while his wife Melinda Gates speaks to the media at an advance tour of the newly constructed $15 million visitor center of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation $500 million campus in Seattle, Washington February 1, 2012. REUTERS/Anthony Bolante


Credit: Reuters/Anthony Bolante


The exact amount will be announced at a summit of world leaders and aid organizations in London on Wednesday, but in an interview with Reuters, Melinda Gates said the commitment would be "on a par" with the foundation's other big programs, like that against malaria, AIDS and tuberculosis.

In January, the foundation pledged a further $750 million for that fight on top of $650 million contributed since the fund was set up 10 years ago.

The aim of the London Summit on Family Planning is to raise $4 billion to expand access to contraception for 120 million women in the developing world by 2020.


"Because we didn't have contraception or family planning on the agenda we weren't putting new money into it," says Gates. "We weren't saying this is a priority. So this is our moment in time to say this is a priority and we need to fund it."

Money is not the only barrier. Controlling population growth has fallen off the development agenda, rendered controversial for decades by coercive programs like forced sterilization in India in the 1970s and China's one-child policy.

It still provokes controversy, not least in the United States where Gates has been criticized by Catholic groups which tend to see contraception and abortion as part of the same issue.

"It's far less controversial than people make it," says Gates, citing a Gallup poll three months ago in the United |States. "Top of the poll was: 90 percent of Americans think contraceptives are morally acceptable. 82 percent of Catholics think contraceptives are morally acceptable. To me that's not controversial.





But he acknowledges the scale of the challenge. At the end of June he was quoted by the BBC as saying: "Both Christians and Muslims, and even traditionalist and other religions, believe that children are God's gifts to man".





Better access to contraception would cut unsafe abortions, estimated to account for 13 percent of maternal deaths in the developing world. First pregnancies for very young women and those that are spaced too closely also carry a heightened risk, the study said.





"There are at least six African countries today that are having large economic growth... Even a place like Ethiopia, it's growing so, as its economy grows, it can start to put more money into health."

The foundation can be a "catalytic wedge", taking some risk out of the equation and bringing some innovation, she says. "The causes we have picked around the world are so enormous that they take governments to come in and really fund them at large scale."


"I think it's really important, particularly in global health, to have ambitious goals but also realistic goals," says Gates. "Even meeting 120 million is going to be tough for us."

(Created by Chris Wickham, editing by Tim Pearce)

Comments (2)
gregbrew56 wrote:
Now THAT’S what I’m talkin’ about!

Well done, Bill and Melinda!

Jul 10, 2012 7:30pm EDT  --  Report as abuse
imright12 wrote:
Many of the countries that the US, UN, WHO, GAVI and the Gates Foundation support, especially in Africa and Asia, oppress, discriminate against, persecute, prosecute, imprison, torture, and even murder their own citizens who happen to be homosexual. Instead of the UN and other international organizations pouring money into these bigoted countries, the organizations should tell the countries to take the money they use to harm their gay citizens and use that money to buy vaccines and medicines instead. These disgusting countries should not be using their scant resources to destroy the lives of innocent citizens who happen to be homosexual when there are more positive and productive things these bigots can use the money for to help all their citizens, including those citizens who are born gay. The US, UN, WHO, GAVI and the Gates foundation should be absolutely ashamed to support the harassment, oppression, imprisonment, torture, and murder of so many innocent people. Until those practices are ended, no country, group, or individual should provide any aid or assistance to these countries. These disgusting countries should be boycotted, sanctions should be brought against them, and they should be treated as pariah nations.

Jul 11, 2012 3:01pm EDT  --  Report as abuse