The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will contribute $912 million to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, co-founder Bill Gates said on Monday, calling on governments to reverse sharp cuts in global health funding.
Speaking at a Reuters Newsmaker event in New York, Gates warned that millions of children could die if aid declines too steeply. “A kid born in northern Nigeria has a 15% chance of dying before the age of 5. You can either be part of improving that or act like that doesn’t matter,” he said in an interview ahead of the foundation’s annual Goalkeepers event.
The pledge matches the foundation’s 2022 contribution, the last time the Geneva-based nonprofit raised money for its three-year budget cycle. The announcement follows aid reductions from governments worldwide, led by the United States.
“I am not capable of making up what the government cuts, and I don’t want to create an illusion of that,” Gates said. The foundation, launched in 2000 by the Microsoft co-founder and his then-wife, is one of the world’s largest private funders of health programmes, focusing on reducing maternal and child deaths, fighting infectious diseases and alleviating poverty.
Earlier this year, Gates pledged to give away almost his entire $200 billion fortune by 2045, accelerating his giving in response to urgent global needs.
Also Read: New Zealand Reopens Petroleum Exploration After Bill Amendment
According to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, development assistance for health fell by 21% between 2024 and 2025, reaching a 15-year low. Gates said the trend could still be reversed, but if it continued, progress that halved child mortality since 2000 saving 5 million lives annually would be at risk.
Maintaining funding for the Global Fund and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, as well as strengthening primary healthcare and speeding access to innovations such as the long-acting HIV drug lenacapavir, would be essential, Gates said. “What’s happening to the health of the world’s children is worse than most people realize, but our long-term prospects are better than most people can imagine.”
At the Goalkeepers event, the foundation awarded Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez its annual Global Goalkeeper Award. While many countries cut contributions, Spain increased its donations to the Global Fund by 12% and to Gavi by 30% this year.
The foundation said its annual progress report on the U.N. sustainable development goals, usually published during the event, would instead be released in December at a meeting in Abu Dhabi, when global health funding prospects would be clearer.
