The Gates Foundation will give $912m to the Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB and Malaria, philanthropist Bill Gates announced this week as he urged governments to reverse global health funding cuts, and step up in trying to save millions of lives.
Speaking at a Reuters Newsmaker event in New York, Gates said the world was at a crossroads, with millions of children at risk of dying if funding drops too steeply.
The Gates Foundation’s pledge matches its donation in 2022. That was the last time the Global Fund – the Geneva-based independent non-profit – raised money on its three-year budget cycle.
“A child born in northern Nigeria has a 15% chance of dying before the age of five. You can either be part of improving that or act as if it doesn’t matter,” Gates said at the foundation’s annual Goalkeepers event, which celebrates and seeks to accelerate progress on UN global development goals set for 2030, including improving health and ending poverty.
“I am not capable of making up what the government cuts, and I don’t want to create an illusion of that,” he said about his pledge.
Earlier this year, Gates pledged to give away almost his entire $200bn fortune by 2045, more quickly than planned because of the urgent need worldwide.
According to the US-based Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, global development assistance fell by 21% between 2024 and 2025 and is at a 15-year low. That could change, said Gates, with organisations like the Global Fund trying to raise money before the end of the year.
However, if the trajectory remains the same, progress that cut child mortality in half since 2000, saving 5m lives a year, could be in jeopardy, he added.
He said there was an opportunity to save millions of lives and end some of the deadliest childhood diseases by the time he will have donated the rest of his fortune in 2045.
But that would require maintaining funding for institutions like the Global Fund and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, prioritising primary healthcare, and quickly rolling out innovations such as the long-acting HIV prevention drug lenacapavir.
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