Bill Gates, billionaire tech mogul and philanthropist, says the world’s worst child health crisis is not malaria, typhoid or polio but malnutrition, stressing that no country in the world is immune to it.
Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, stated this in an introduction to the latest annual Goalkeepers report titled, ‘A Race to Nourish a Warming World’.
“When historians write about the first quarter of the 21st century, I think they may sum it up this way: Twenty years of unprecedented progress followed by five years of stagnation. This is true for nearly every issue the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation works on, from poverty reduction to primary school enrollment. But nowhere is the contrast more stark or tragic than in health,” Gates wrote in the preface of the report.
He added, “But we also need to look forward. The R&D pipeline is brimming with powerful—and surprisingly cost-effective—new breakthroughs. Now we just need to put them to work fighting the world’s most pervasive health crises. And it starts with good nutrition.
“Every now and then, somebody will ask me what I would do if I had a magic wand. For years, I’ve given the same answer: I would solve malnutrition.”
This summer, UNICEF released its first report on child food poverty with stark revelations: two-thirds of the world’s children—more than 400 million young ones—are not getting enough nutrients to grow and thrive, putting them at higher risk for malnutrition. In 2023, the WHO estimated that 148 million children experienced stunting, and 45 million children experienced wasting—the most severe forms of chronic and acute malnutrition. It prevents them from growing to their full potential—and, in the worst cases, from growing up at all.
“When a child dies, half the time, the underlying cause is malnutrition. And now, a significant headwind is making malnutrition harder to solve: climate change. We worked with our partners at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation to better understand how difficult the headwind is,” Gates disclosed, revealing that between 2024 and 2050, climate change will mean 40 million additional children will be stunted, and 28 million additional children will be wasted.
“It’s an important projection, and it should inform where country leaders devote their aid money to reverse the current trends and the growing burden of malnutrition,” added Gates. “Obviously, fighting climate change is crucial. But what these data show is that the health crisis and the climate crisis are the same thing in the poorest countries near the equator. In fact, the best way to fight the impacts of climate change is by investing in nutrition.”
“By now, it’s clear: malnutrition makes every forward step our species wants to take heavier and harder. But the inverse is also true. If we solve malnutrition, we make it easier to solve every other problem. We solve extreme poverty,” Gates explained. “Vaccines are more effective. And deadly diseases like malaria and pneumonia become far less fatal.”
Gates, therefore, called for the jumpstarting “a second global health boom by getting kids the right nutrients,” reiterating that “this is especially true now because we have more tools to ensure kids gets healthier even as the world gets hotter.”
According to him, the “science of nutrition” has experienced a renaissance over the past decade.
“Animal scientists have discovered how to breed more productive livestock, while food scientists have found new ways to fortify more nutrients into the staples of people’s diets—like salt, flour, and bouillon cubes,” the tech mogul stressed. “Doctors are even beginning to unlock the mysteries of the microbiome, the teeming universe of bacteria that lives inside our digestive tracts.”
