Resources from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will be geared towards tackling the pandemic. In addition to the US $ 250 million dollars that has already been donated to the COVID response, the Foundation’s commitment scales new heights. More than US $ 40 billion dollars will be oriented towards accelerating testing in developing countries and the development of drugs and vaccines against the virus.
Until quite recently, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation employed more than half of its resources to eradicate the spread of infectious diseases. Now that this pandemic has shaken the whole world, they are applying their expertise to find the best solutions. “We’ve taken an organization that was focused on HIV and malaria and polio eradication, and almost entirely shifted it to work on this. This has the Foundation’s total attention”, declared Gates in an interview with the Financial Times.
Expanded commitment. Africa – one of the priorities of the Gates Foundation
One of the priorities of the world’s wealthiest charity is Africa. According to Gates, the disease is disproportionately hurting poorer communities and the COVID situation presages dramatic consequences for African countries. The World Bank warns that economies in Sub-Saharan Africa could lose between US $ 37 and US $ 79 billion in loss of output in 2020 due to the COVID virus. According to a new regional economic analysis, the pandemic will cause the first recession in this region in 25 years. “Africa alone will not be able to contain the disease and its impacts on its own; there is an urgent need for temporary official bilateral debt relief to help combat the pandemic while preserving macroeconomic stability in the region”, said Albert Zeufack, Chief Economist for Africa at the World Bank.
African policymakers should focus their attention on the crisis that has gripped the health system and improve the response to the pandemic. Additional health risks due to limited access to safe water, precarious sanitation facilities and urban crowding could place additional pressure on a system already affected by the novel coronavirus.
An increased attention on COVID, a threat for other health structures?
As a result of the focus on COVID-19, other health sectors could suffer. According to WHO, malaria deaths could double during the pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa, taking into consideration the current trends with about 400,000 more people possibly dying compared to the number in 2018. This is the worst-case scenario that could become a real threat as a result of interruption to insecticide-treated net campaigns and access to anti-malarial medicines. The fight against vaccine-preventable diseases could not end unevenly balanced in the current condition caused by this pandemic. Notwithstanding the fact that many African countries have set a target of allocating at least 15% of their annual budget to improve the health sector, many have not yet managed to do so. In the absence of long-term planning which could produce an improvement in the capacity of health systems, people in Africa are faced with dysfunctional and weak health responses.
The world is coming together
American businessman and philanthropist Bill Gates has claimed that virus outbreak will cost the global economy tens of trillions of dollars and that some nations would be particularly affected. According to Gates, innovations in treatments, vaccines, testing, contact tracing and policies are critical to bringing the disease under control and re-opening the global economy.
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