Philanthropist and Microsoft founder Bill Gates this week unveiled , as he launched the campaign to bolster support for development aid to poor nations.
After rejecting paintings by van Gogh and Leonardo da Vinci 鈥� and even the Microsoft logo 鈥� Gates revealed that he had plumped for a graph showing that between 1960 and 2008, the number of children dying each year fell from 20 million to 9.3 million.
Making the case for aid, Gates and his wife Melinda listed numerous successes through vaccination, education and agricultural programmes over the past decade.
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Melinda Gates said that efforts to combat corruption through careful auditing of funds were working. Problems of 鈥渁id dependency鈥� are being reduced though 鈥渟mart aid鈥� that helps recipients to escape poverty through their own efforts, she said. 鈥淭he overall trend is that the world is getting better and better, although maybe not fast enough.鈥�
15-year target
Bill Gates said his aim for the next 15 years is to see child deaths cut to 5 million per year.
This will be achieved by dispensing more bed nets and anti-malarial drugs, deploying more trained birth attendants, and supplying new vaccines to combat lung disease, and diarrhoea caused by rotaviruses. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a road map for saving more than 4 million lives a year by 2025,鈥� he said.
To ram home the message that aid has rapidly improved lives for the world鈥檚 poor, the pair said that since its creation in 2002, the has supplied anti-retroviral drugs to 2.8 million people with HIV, diagnosed and treated 7 million cases of TB and distributed 122 million bed nets. The nets halved malaria cases in Rwanda, Cambodia and Zambia, and reduced incidence by 76 per cent in the Philippines.
Through the , vaccines have reduced tetanus cases by 85 per cent, and diphtheria and measles by 93 per cent in 10 years.
There is also progress supplying nursing care to help pregnant mothers and their babies safely through childbirth, another unserved need that claims 300,000 lives each year.
Community links
Melinda Gates said that since 2003, 15,000 regional health centres have opened in Ethiopia alone, employing 35,000 healthcare workers. 鈥淭hey live out in the communities themselves,鈥� she said, adding that this is a pivotal factor that has helped to drive down child mortality in Ethiopia by 25 per cent since 2003.
In agriculture, aid and research are helping to boost productivity through targeted interventions aimed at improving crop yields, capturing water for irrigation and providing advice on selling surplus produce. 鈥淲e can cut hunger in half in Africa by 2020,鈥� said Bill Gates.
Overall, the programme of research, innovation and 鈥渟mart aid鈥� is helping families to lift themselves out of poverty, said Melinda Gates. 鈥淚f you protect your children through vaccination, it protects the whole family, as parents don鈥檛 have to care for sick children and can go to work, so they then have more to spend on their children鈥檚 education and future.鈥�
Vaccination also counters unsustainable population growth, Melinda Gates said. 鈥淲hen they鈥檙e confident their children will make it past their 5th birthday, parents have fewer children.鈥�
