Gates Foundation pledges $ 922 m to decrease malnutrition

28 / 09 / 2021

By Marwa Nassar - -

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has announced a commitment of $922 million over the next five years to address global nutrition and advance its mission that all women and children have the nutrition they need to live healthy and productive lives.

The pledge, delivered at the first-ever United Nations Food Systems Summit, is the foundation’s largest nutrition commitment to date.

“Nutrition is fundamental to better health, and to an equitable COVID recovery. Yet both malnutrition rates and aid levels are moving in the wrong direction,” said Melinda French Gates, co-chair of the Gates Foundation.

“This funding will help more people around the world get the nutrition they need to live a healthy life, and we hope it serves as an invitation for more donors, foundations, governments, and private-sector leaders to build on today’s investment with more bold commitments.”

“We will continue to prioritize and invest in nutrition because it is critical to reducing preventable deaths, improving maternal and child health and building resilience for the future,” said Bill Gates, co-chair of the Gates Foundation. “While malnutrition accounts for nearly half of all child deaths, it still receives less than one percent of foreign aid—a trend that must change.”

World hunger spiked in 2020, likely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Recent data estimates that around one-tenth of the global population, or 811 million people, were undernourished last year, and 3 billion people lacked access to healthy diets, largely due to lack of affordability. Undernutrition remains the underlying cause of nearly half of all child deaths, and the world is currently not on track to achieve targets for any nutrition indicators by 2030.

The estimated cost of malnutrition on the global economy could be as high as $3.5 trillion per year, yet global nutrition continues to be an underinvested area of health and development, accounting for less than 1% of global foreign aid. National budget allocations in high-burden countries are similarly low. Yet, addressing malnutrition is one of the smartest investments governments and donors can make in the health and economic prosperity of people and nations, with every $1 invested in nutrition returning $16 back into the local economy.

The $922 million commitment over the next five years will advance the foundation’s systems approach, prioritizing efforts across food, health, and social protection systems to reach the most vulnerable.