When historians write about the first quarter of the 21st century, I think they may sum it up this way: Twenty years of unprecedented progress followed by five years of stagnation.<\/p>\n
This is true for nearly every issue the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation works on, from poverty reduction to primary school enrollment. But nowhere is the contrast more stark or tragic than in health.<\/p>\n
Between 2000 and 2020, the world witnessed a \u201cglobal health boom.\u201d Child mortality fell by 50%. In 2000, more than 10 million children died every year, and now that number is down to fewer than five million children. The prevalence of the world\u2019s deadliest infectious diseases fell by half, too. Best of all, the progress was happening in regions where the disease burden had been the highest. Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia saw the most improvement.<\/p>\n
This health boom had many causes. A new generation of political leaders embraced humanitarianism. Hundreds of thousands of health workers fanned out across the globe, bringing the latest medicine to places that doctors had rarely visited. But one often overlooked factor was a small\u2014yet crucial\u2014increase in funding.<\/p>\n
Starting in 2000, the world\u2019s wealthiest countries began steadily increasing their funding to supplement low-income countries as they increased their own investments in health. This funding fueled the work of organizations like Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, which gave poorer nations access to life-saving vaccines, drugs, and other medical breakthroughs.<\/p>\n
Aid is relatively small. By 2020, wealthy countries were spending less than one quarter of 1% of their budgets on aid. That\u2019s an average of $10.47 on health per person in the poorest countries. But that $10.47 made a remarkable difference.<\/p>\n
Then COVID-19 hit, and progress came to a screeching halt.<\/p>\n
Today, the world is contending with more challenges than at any point in my adult life: inflation, debt, new wars. Unfortunately, aid isn\u2019t keeping pace with these needs, particularly in the places that need it the most.<\/p>\n
For instance, more than half of all child deaths still occur in sub-Saharan Africa. Since 2010, the percentage of the world\u2019s poor living in the region has also increased by more than 20 percentage points. Despite this, during the same period, the share of total foreign aid to Africa has dropped from nearly 40% to only 25%\u2014the lowest percentage in 20 years. Fewer resources mean more children will die of preventable causes.<\/p>\n
The global health boom is over.\u00a0But for how long?<\/em><\/p>\n That\u2019s the question I have been wrestling with for the past five years:\u00a0Will we look back on this period as the end of a golden era? Or is it just a brief intermission before another global health boom begins?<\/em><\/p>\n I\u2019m still an optimist. I think we can give global health a second act\u2014even in a world where competing challenges require governments to stretch their budgets.<\/p>\n To do this, we\u2019ll need a two-pronged approach. First, the world has to recommit to the work that drove the progress in the early 2000s, especially investments in crucial vaccines and medicines. They\u2019re still saving millions of lives each year, and we can\u2019t afford to backslide.<\/p>\n But we also need to look forward. The R&D pipeline is brimming with powerful\u2014and surprisingly cost-effective\u2014new breakthroughs. Now we just need to put them to work fighting the world\u2019s most pervasive health crises. And it starts with good nutrition.<\/p>\n Every now and then, somebody will ask me what I would do if I had a magic wand. For years, I\u2019ve given the same answer: I would solve malnutrition.<\/p>\n This summer, UNICEF released its first report on child food poverty. The findings were stark. Two-thirds of the world\u2019s children\u2014more than 400 million kids\u2014are not getting enough nutrients to grow and thrive, putting them at higher risk for malnutrition. In 2023, the WHO estimated that 148 million children experienced stunting, and 45 million children experienced wasting\u2014the most severe forms of chronic and acute malnutrition. It prevents them from growing to their full potential\u2014and, in the worst cases, from growing up\u00a0at all.<\/em><\/p>\n When a child dies, half the time the underlying cause is malnutrition.<\/p>\n And now a significant headwind is making malnutrition harder to solve: climate change. We worked with our partners at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation to better understand how difficult the headwind is:<\/p>\n Between 2024 and 2050, climate change will mean 40 million additional children will be stunted, and 28 million additional children will be wasted.<\/p>\n It\u2019s an important projection, and it should inform where country leaders devote their aid money to reverse the current trends and the growing burden of malnutrition.<\/p>\n Obviously, fighting climate change is crucial. But what these data show is that the health crisis and the climate crisis are the same thing in the poorest countries near the equator. In fact, the best way to fight the impacts of climate change is by investing in nutrition.<\/p>\n Most people associate malnutrition with hunger. We\u2019ve all seen the awful photos of starving children. That\u2019s the most visible kind of malnutrition\u2014but it\u2019s not the only kind.<\/p>\n Malnutrition also includes what doctors call \u201chidden hunger.\u201d Kids can be eating enough calories and still not getting the right nutrients. When this happens to very young children, it interrupts the development of their bodies and brains. The effects are irreversible.<\/p>\n With most serious childhood diseases, the kids who survive eventually grow up fine. But the kids who survive malnutrition never truly escape it. It follows them to school. A child who has a severe brush with malnutrition before the age of three will complete five fewer years of schooling than well-nourished kids. And the malnourished kids who do remain in school tend to do poorly and take longer to complete each grade than their peers.<\/p>\n As these kids become adults, it continues to haunt them. Studies show that people who went hungry as kids earn 10% less over their lifetimes and are 33% less likely to escape poverty.<\/p>\n Nations can\u2019t grow if their people can\u2019t. The economic costs of undernutrition are significant: It is estimated that every year, the cost of undernutrition is US$3 trillion in productivity loss because malnutrition has stunted people\u2019s physical and cognitive abilities. In low-income countries, that loss ranges from 3 to 16 percent (or more) of GDP. It\u2019s the equivalent of a permanent 2008-level global recession.<\/p>\n Today, one in every five of the world\u2019s children suffers from stunting, and climate change threatens to increase that number. We should ask:\u00a0What will that mean for the global economy in 20 years when these children are in the prime of their working lives?<\/em><\/p>\n Few economists think of the malnutrition rate as a critical economic data point\u2014but they should start. Nutritional deficits quickly translate into financial deficits.<\/p>\n By now, it\u2019s clear: Malnutrition makes every forward step our species wants to take heavier and harder.<\/p>\n But the inverse is also true. If we solve malnutrition, we make it easier to solve every other problem. We solve extreme poverty. Vaccines are more effective. And deadly diseases like malaria and pneumonia become far less fatal.<\/p>\n That\u2019s why I believe we can jumpstart a second global health boom by getting kids the right nutrients.<\/p>\n This is especially true now, because we have more tools to ensure kids gets healthier even as the world gets hotter.<\/p>\n The science of nutrition has experienced a renaissance over the past decade. Animal scientists have discovered how to breed more productive livestock, while food scientists have found new ways to fortify more nutrients into the staples of people\u2019s diets\u2014like salt, flour, and bouillon cubes. Doctors are even beginning to unlock the mysteries of the microbiome, the teeming universe of bacteria that lives inside our digestive tracts.<\/p>\n As you read on, you\u2019ll hear from people on the front line of nourishing people around the world. Together, they\u2019re showing us how we can jumpstart another golden age for health: with a lot of grit, creativity, and enormous generosity toward their fellow human beings.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When historians write about the first quarter of the 21st century, I think they may sum it up this way: Twenty years of unprecedented progress followed by five years of stagnation. This is true for nearly every issue the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation works on, from poverty reduction to primary school enrollment. But nowhere […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94917\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}We have new tools to help solve malnutrition<\/h3>\n