Melinda Gates Lays Out Her Biggest Concern For the Next Phase of the COVID-19 Pandemic

From 2018-2019, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave more money to the World Health Organization than any entity except the U.S. government. With President Donald Trump cutting ties to the international health agency in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Gates Foundation’s work has come into sharper relief than ever. Co-chair Bill Gates announced at the Global Vaccine Summit on June 4 that it will give $1.6 billion over five years to the Vaccine Alliance (GAVI), to help ensure that people around the world have access to vaccines, regardless of income. The Gates Foundation in 1999 pledged $750 million to help establish GAVI, and the organization has since vaccinated more than 760 million children in underserved areas. Ahead of the June 4 pledge event, TIME spoke with Gates Foundation co-chair Melinda Gates about equitable solutions to COVID-19, the need for optimism in times of anxiety and what will happen to the WHO. TIME: The scale of anti-racism protests we’re seeing right now is incredible. How does this moment relate to your work in health equity? Gates: What happened to George Floyd was brutal and horrible and should never happen to anyone, anywhere. This is a moment of reckoning in the United States. We all need to really pause during this time and learn as best we can from it. Even before we saw this senseless death, COVID had already started to show us gaps and structural problems in our country. We are seeing black men die at a disproportiona...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 Source Type: news