Gates Foundation pledges $2.5B for women’s health worldwide

Geoff Bennett:

The Gates Foundation announced a new $2.5 billion pledge through the year 2030 for women's health initiatives across the globe. It comes at a time when the Trump administration is cutting major research and aid directed at women and maternal health.

Amna Nawaz spoke recently with the point person about the goals of this new funding.

Amna Nawaz:

Dr. Anita Zaidi is president of the Gates Foundation's Gender Equality Division, and she joins me now.

Dr. Zaidi, welcome to the "News Hour." Thanks for joining us.

Dr. Anita Zaidi, Gender Equality Division, Gates Foundation:

Thank you, Amna. Thank you for having me.

Amna Nawaz:

So this new commitment of $2.5 billion for women's health over the next five years is focused on five areas.

I will tick through them quickly here, obstetric care to make pregnancy and delivery safer, maternal health and nutrition, gynecological and menstrual health, more accessible and effective contraceptive options, and better diagnosis and treatment of STIs, or sexually transmitted infections.

So why these five priorities? What's the overarching goal here?

Dr. Anita Zaidi:

So, Amna, this is — when we looked at all of the data that is there for women's health and what it is that causes a lot of problems around the world, these were the areas that had three things in common.

One is, they are a huge burden and unmet need. Two is that they are very neglected from an R&D perspective. And three is that low-cost, affordable innovations that can be available in the near-term horizon are possible for many of these issues.

Amna Nawaz:

You said also these are going to particularly affect women in low and middle-income countries. We should point out your background was in pediatric care in Pakistan.

Can you just give us an example of the kinds of things that you would see that tells you these investments make a real difference? Give us one or two stories.

Dr. Anita Zaidi:

Yes.

So how often, for example, women don't get Caesarean sections in time because we don't have the right tools to diagnose when she needs a Caesarean section, or unnecessary Caesarean sections are done because we guess wrong. And that's a problem actually that women face all around the world.

But I used to see this all the time, that a Caesarean section was delayed because you did not know that this woman actually needed to be in a hospital that was far away.

And so one of the things I think which would be the most transformative and which we will see come out sooner, in the next five years, is going to be what we can do with artificial intelligence to be able to really understand when a woman really needs a Caesarean section for a safe delivery.

Amna Nawaz:

We should point out too these are areas that have long been underfunded. There was a 2021 study that found just 1 percent of health care research and innovation is invested in female-specific conditions outside of oncology, just 1 percent. Why is that?

Dr. Anita Zaidi:

Yes, so that's a really good question, Amna.

It's — there's several reasons. There is a systemic issue, structural, in medicine where the male body has been the default body. And so the assumption is that whatever works for men also works for women. But there are fundamental biological differences between men and women that need different solutions.

And two is that many areas such as pregnancy are considered very high risk for research. And so often the thing has been you leave pregnant women out of a lot of clinical trials. And what that has resulted in is the situation where we actually now don't have medicines that we can use if a pregnant woman develops a problem.

A very big example of this, which is a problem that women, pregnant women, face around the world is preeclampsia, which is hypertension during pregnancy. Preeclampsia has no treatment anywhere around the world.

Amna Nawaz:

There's also been reports that look at how the money invested in women's health pays dividends more broadly in society. Is this just about investing in women's health?

Dr. Anita Zaidi:

Well, so when you work in low-resource environments like I have worked, you very quickly see the connection between women's health, children's health, and family health.

And so I would say one of the most profound lessons I learned by working in communities is how children cannot thrive where women are not thriving. And those things are extremely closely related. And, in fact, if we want to decrease child mortality around the world, you really need to focus on women's health.

Amna Nawaz:

We're also speaking at a time when you have seen the U.S. government pull back from a lot of foreign aid funding it was doing, dismantling health programs right here in the U.S. and making it harder, a lot of people argue, to access things like family planning and maternal health care.

How much did all of that inform this investment right now?

Dr. Anita Zaidi:

So they're not connected.

I would call this investment a foundational pillar of the Gender Equality Division at the Gates Foundation. And I'm just really proud to be able to share this commitment. It's the largest commitment that the foundation has ever made to any particular area of R&D. And we chose the five years for a good reason as well.

One is that I think that this is a unique opportunity to accelerate progress for women's health, because so many A.I. has made so much faster progress possible. And two is that it's a short enough time that I want to hold myself accountable to be able to deliver on the promise. So that's the five years.

No foundation or groups of foundations can match the funding that the U.S. government has historically provided for fighting disease, hunger, and poverty around the world. And our hope is that this investment can catalyze attention and interest from the private sector and from philanthropy.

Amna Nawaz:

You have called this $2.5 billion just a drop in the bucket. To meet the need that's out there, what needs to happen?

Dr. Anita Zaidi:

Yes, so it seems like a big number. And it is a big number, $2.5 billion for the next five years for women's health innovations.

But for what the need is, it's a drop. It really is a drop in the bucket. And we really are hoping that this is the — this announcement sparks interest from a lot of other funders, innovators, private philanthropy, private sector to come in and see that this is not just the right thing to do, but there's a tremendous opportunity for coming up with new solutions in a very exciting area of science.

Amna Nawaz:

That is Dr. Anita Zaidi, the president of the Gates Foundation's Gender Equality Division.

Dr. Zaidi, thank you. Such a pleasure to speak with you.

Dr. Anita Zaidi:

Same here. Thank you so much, Amna.