Economic Benefit Of Vaccines Highlighted In 2017 Bill & Melinda Gates Annual Letter

Bill Gates and Melinda Gates released their annual letter on February 14, 2017, and this year’s letter highlights the couple’s optimism about progress in global health. The letter, written in the form of a response to a query from Warren Buffet about the effectiveness of his investment in the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation ten years ago, explains that 122 million children’s lives have been saved since 1990, through sustained reduction in childhood deaths. (1990 is typically the baseline year considered for measuring recent progress to achieve the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, which were health and other goals for achievement by 2015.) Saving children’s lives is the overarching goal of the Gates Foundation’s health work, and the drop in childhood deaths is falling faster than expected. The most important factor in reducing childhood deaths, the Gates’ letter emphasizes, is increasing global vaccination rates. That makes vaccines a great investment. Vaccination rates are the highest they’ve ever been. Bill Gates notes that “for every dollar spent on childhood immunizations, you get $44 in economic benefits.” And “that includes saving the money that families lose when a child is sick and a parent can’t work,” he explained. That figure on the economic benefits of vaccines is based on research, by Sachiko Ozawa and colleagues, on the global return on investment in vaccines. The research was published in the February 2016 issue of Health ...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - Category: Health Management Authors: Tags: Costs and Spending Global Health Policy GrantWatch Public Health Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Children Health Philanthropy Prevention vaccines Source Type: blogs