Gates Foundation commits $2.5 billion for women's health efforts

The Gates Foundation will spend $2.5 billion over the next five years on projects related to women's health, just as the U.S. government pulls back on science research and international development.

The announcement provides the most detail yet on one area where the foundation plans to use its remaining funds before it shuts down in 2045. This tranche of money will focus on women's health, targeting critical areas that particularly hit women in low- and middle-income countries.

"Women's health continues to be ignored, underfunded, and sidelined," Bill Gates, chair of the foundation and co-founder of Microsoft Corp., said in a statement Monday. "Too many women still die from preventable causes or live in poor health. That must change."

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The Gates Foundation previously said it would spend $200 billion over the next 20 years to close out its operations, a quicker timeline than its original plan of shuttering 20 years after Gates' death. He said in May the timeline wasn't accelerated because of funding cuts instituted by President Donald Trump.

The U.S. pulled out of the World Health Organization in January, then in March shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development, which managed tens of billions of dollars of foreign aid. The government has also made it more difficult for researchers to get funding, cutting staff across federal health agencies including the National Institutes of Health, the largest public funder of biomedical research.

"In the near term, things may go backwards because of these funding cuts," Gates told Bloomberg TV in May. The billionaire, along with his former wife Melinda French Gates, have given $60.2 billion to the foundation through the end of 2024.

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The foundation says its new spending will support a myriad of projects, including portable ultrasound machines used during pregnancy, contraception delivered via microneedle patches stuck on the skin and basic research on the microbiome. It called on other public and private entities to increase funding for women's health. 

Industry support is particularly important, said Rasa Izadnegahdar, director of maternal, newborn, child nutrition and health at the Gates Foundation. Pharmaceutical companies have the expertise to take early research and move it through into product development, he said in an interview.

"We see this need for other bigger players to actually come along, particularly those in industry, to move this forward," he said.