The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation today announced a groundbreaking $2.5 billion commitment through 2030 aimed at revolutionizing research and development (R&D) exclusively focused on women’s health.
Underfunded crisis
For far too long, women’s health R&D has been chronically underfunded, under-researched, and underserved.
Data highlights a stark reality, as a 2021 analysis by McKinsey & Company revealed that a mere 1% of healthcare research and innovation is directed towards female-specific conditions beyond oncology.
“For too long, women have suffered from health conditions that are misunderstood, misdiagnosed, or ignored,” said Dr. Anita Zaidi, president of the Gates Foundation’s Gender Equality Division.
“We want this investment to spark a new era of women-centred innovation, one where women’s lives, bodies, and voices are prioritized in health R&D.”
This persistent neglect leaves critical issues such as preeclampsia, gestational diabetes, heavy menstrual bleeding, endometriosis, and menopause, which collectively affect hundreds of millions of women globally, deeply under-researched.
The consequences of this underinvestment are severe, leading to preventable deaths and poor health for countless women worldwide.
For example, endometriosis affects one in ten women worldwide, yet 65% are misdiagnosed, often waiting an average of four years for a correct diagnosis.
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Furthermore, maternal health issues like postpartum haemorrhage and pre-eclampsia were notably absent from recent growth in health innovation.
A Strategic Focus
The foundation’s investment is designed to drive impact across every stage of a woman’s life, which will specifically advance innovations within five high-impact priority areas:
- Obstetric care and maternal immunization: Making pregnancy and delivery safer.
- Maternal health and nutrition: Supporting healthier pregnancies and newborns.
- Gynaecological and menstrual health: Advancing tools and research for better diagnosis, treatment, and improved gynaecological health, and reduced infection risk.
- Contraceptive innovation: Offering more accessible, acceptable, and effective options.
- Sexually transmitted infections (STIs): Improving diagnosis and treatment to reduce the disproportionate burden on women.
Breakthroughs include AI-powered ultrasounds, non-hormonal contraceptives, and first-in-class therapeutics for preeclampsia, a condition that disproportionately affects women in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
The focus also reflects the unique challenges present in low-resource settings, making these areas ripe for broader public and private investment to achieve scalable impact.
“Investing in women’s health has a lasting impact across generations,” said Bill Gates. “It leads to healthier families, stronger economies, and a more just world.”
Call for Global Partnership by the Gates Foundation
Investing in women’s health yields a profound and lasting impact across generations, fostering healthier families, more robust economies, and a more just world.
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Research indicates that every KSh130 invested in women’s health generates KSh390 in economic growth, and that closing the gender health gap could boost the global economy by an astonishing KSh130 trillion per year by 2040.
While this Ksh322 billion commitment is significant, Dr. Zaidi emphasized that it still falls far short of what is needed in a neglected and underfunded area of huge human need and opportunity.
The foundation is urgently calling on governments, philanthropists, investors, and the private sector to co-invest in women’s health innovations, help shape product development, and ensure equitable access to treatments for the women and girls who need them most.
This latest commitment builds upon the Gates Foundation’s 25-year legacy of advancing maternal and child health and supporting women’s empowerment globally.
It aligns with their ambitious long-term goals for 2045, which include ending preventable deaths of mothers and babies, ensuring future generations are free from deadly infectious diseases, and lifting millions out of poverty onto a path of prosperity.
The foundation believes that by unlocking progress in women’s health, broader social and economic gains will naturally follow.
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