Annual Letter of Bill and Melinda Gates 2014

 

The year 2015 will mark the end of the time period set to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and shall finalize the post-2015 development agenda. The UN’s initiative at the Millennium Summit in 2000 had set out to achieve eight Millennium Development Goals (MGDs) that includes the promise of removing the people from extreme poverty and multiple deprivations. About 189 United Nations member countries and 23 international organisations have committed to achieve goals by 2015. The overarching goal of poverty reduction is attained as poverty rates are now nearly halved between 1990 and 2010. But still 1.2 billion live in extreme poverty zone.  Several initiatives, both public and private, have contributed to the progress made.

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the largest private foundation in the world towards battling poverty, hunger and disease. The Annual Letter 2014 of Bill and Melinda Gates assumes significant importance due to the Foundation’s sustained contributions and partnerships that helped to mitigate the poverty and improved the health of millions of children across the globe. The Letter had also pronounced few positive predictions. By 2035, Bill Gates predicted that there will be almost no poor countries left in the world as per the current definition.

In his letter Gates busted three most common myths that are believed to obstruct the progress by elucidating that there are already clear signals of progress. First, poor countries are doomed to stay poor.  In the early 1960’s the world was divided into US and its western allies, Soviet Union and its allies and other countries which were termed as third world countries. In the developed world, children would attend schools while in the third world kids died young, didn’t attend school much and are trapped in poverty. But in fact there has been gradual and consistent progress across various countries over the period of time wherein life style in the third world has changed; per capita income has substantially increased. Since 1960 China’s income has increased eight fold, India’s has quadrupled; Brazil’s almost quintupled and Botswana had witnessed 30 fold increases in income. Similarly the percentage of extremely poor has almost halved since 1990. Now the countries fall in two broad categories- developed or developing countries. All the nations are growing at a faster pace but still there are still a handful of nations which are hardly developing. Hence nations are referred to as High, Medium and Low income nations. Likewise, sub-Saharan countries from Africa are doing extremely well and are racing towards sustained development. The key is to invest collective efforts towards developing cheaper and natural sources of energy to contain the damage to the environment and climate.

The Second myth is that foreign aid is a big waste. Often people believe that aid doesn’t help however, Bill Gates says that foreign aid has saved and effectively improved lives of many and laid foundation for a long term economic progress. Even the young voters of developed nations feel that as much as 10% of budget is spent on development aid and hence calling for it’s immediate roll back. However, the statistics indicate that even the most generous nation Norway allots less that 3% of the budget towards development fund and the figures for US is less than 1%. The fact is that most foundations work in tandem with the aid receiving Governments that also contribute to the funds as a part of collective commitment to development. It is also important to note that through foreign aid, taxpayers around the world are investing in development organisations that are saving lives in poorest countries.

As an example, Gates refers to the US, which invests $ 11 billion in foreign aid. It has coordinated with three organisations- Global Alliance for Vaccine and Immunisation (GAVI) Alliance vaccinated 440 million children against vaccine-preventable diseases, Polio Global Eradicative Initiative nearly 2.5 billion have been immunised against Polio, The Global Fund to fight against Malaria, HIV and TB 6.1 million people received anti retroviral therapy apart from detecting 11.2 million cases of TB. US government in fact spends 60 times more on military. Till now Melinda and Bill Gates have donated $28 billion towards the foundation.

With regards to aid, people are still sceptical about the amount of aid that actually reaches that last mile since corruption at various stages eats away into the funds. While there is no denial of the fact that corruption does exist, it does occur in a small scale and negligible when compared to saving lives. Moreover, funds are also utilised in research and developing new tools like vaccines and better crops. Yet, another argument is that aid breeds dependency. Most of the aid recipient nations hardly receive any aid now and few of them have graduated into aid providing nations even. India now receives 0.09% of GDP as aid down from 1% in 1991. But aid in particular sectors like health, agriculture and infrastructure would harness growth in long term. Aid has helped in eradicating small pox world-wide, eliminated measles in Southern Africa, eliminated polio in Latin America and a health initiative in China reduced TB cases by 40%. Health has in fact yielded great results which reduced child mortality and many people are living longer and leading healthier lives.

Finally, the third myth is that saving lives leads to overpopulations which seem to be so fictitious and presumptuous.  There seems to be a correlation between high infant mortality to high birth rate in some of the fast reproducing nations. In fact higher mortality doesn’t reduce the growth of population, as in case of Afghanistan. In fact, it is observed that as child morality is reduced, birth rate and consequently the population growth decline because, when infant mortality decreases it is observed that people tend to have smaller families. Further, women’s empowerment, age of marriage and level of education have an important bearing on the fertility rate.

The letter strongly opines the answer to sustainable world lies in creating societies where people enjoy basic health, relative prosperity, fundamental equality and access to contraceptives.

 

 

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