Bill and Melinda Gates Urge Global Leaders to Maintain Foreign Aid

Announce Global Campaign to Greatly Reduce Neglected Tropical Diseases by 2020

The co-chairs of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation today called on world leaders, corporations, NGOs, and individuals to maintain commitments to foreign assistance and investment despite the difficult economic times, citing strong evidence showing that investments in development and health work. Bill and Melinda Gates also announced a $34 million grant to the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases to help control and greatly reduce the most prevalent neglected diseases that affect the world’s poorest populations by 2020.

“Our work together to help the world’s poor is more important in the face of this global financial crisis,” said Bill Gates at a news conference at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “If we lose sight of our long-term priority to expand opportunity for the world’s poor and abandon our commitments and partnerships to reduce inequity, we run the risk of emerging from the current economic downturn in a world with even greater disparities in health and education and fewer opportunities for people to improve their lives.”

The Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases is working to end global suffering and death from neglected tropical diseases by expanding access to low-cost and proven treatments. While most of these diseases have little name recognition in industrialized countries, together they cause severe disability in the world’s poorest countries and result in billions of dollars of lost productivity. The new grant announced today aims to end the suffering of more than 1.4 billion people worldwide who live on less than $1.25 per day.

Bill and Melinda Gates challenged the business community, individuals and world leaders to review the neglected tropical disease “investment book”, a resource developed by the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases. The Global Network has mapped out the health and monetary benefits gained when an individual or corporation makes a specific NTD investment. In Liberia, for example, a $3.6 million investment over five years will result in comprehensive treatment to 2.4 million people, or nearly 75 percent of that country’s population.

The seven most common neglected tropical diseases are: trachoma (eye infections), soil-transmitted helminths (hookworm, Ascaris, Trichuris), onchocerciasis (river blindness), schistosomiasis (snail fever) and lymphatic filariasis (elephantiasis).

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Contacts

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
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