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Gates Foundation Commits $2.5 Billion to Academic Research to Tackle Neglected Women’s Health Issues

Updated: 4 days ago

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Bill Gates calls women’s health “ignored, underfunded and sidelined” in major new initiative

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will invest $2.5 billion in women’s health by 2030, in what it called one of the largest single commitments to the field to date.

The announcement, made in early August, comes just months after Bill Gates pledged to give away his $200 billion fortune by 2045.


The new funding marks one of the foundation’s first major moves since that pledge, and represents a one-third increase over what it spent on women’s and maternal health research and development in the last five years.

“Women’s health continues to be ignored, underfunded and sidelined. Too many women still die from preventable causes or live in poor health,” Gates said in a statement. “That must change.”

Addressing under-researched conditions

The investment will target conditions that affect hundreds of millions of women in both high- and low-income countries, but which have historically been overlooked by funders and researchers. These include preeclampsia, gestational diabetes, heavy menstrual bleeding, endometriosis and menopause.

Funding will be directed across five key areas:

  • obstetric care and maternal immunisation

  • maternal health and nutrition

  • gynaecological and menstrual health

  • contraceptive innovation

  • sexually transmitted infections

The foundation said its aim is not only to spur research but also to develop new products and ensure they are accessible worldwide, particularly in lower-income settings.

“We don’t even have the answers to basic questions”

Dr. Anita Zaidi, the Gates Foundation’s president of gender equality, said women’s health research has been stymied by long-standing gender bias and a lack of investment.

“If you look at the literature, there may be only 10 women who’ve been studied, ever,” Zaidi told Reuters, citing the limited data available on how drugs cross into the uterus. “We don’t even have the answers to these basic questions.”

A 2021 McKinsey & Co analysis found that only about 1% of global healthcare research and innovation spending goes to female-specific conditions beyond cancer.

Zaidi acknowledged that the foundation’s $2.5 billion pledge is “a drop in the bucket” compared with what is needed. She called on private companies, philanthropists and governments to step in and scale up investment.

A global health gap

Experts have long warned that the neglect of women’s health has direct consequences: maternal deaths that could have been prevented, chronic pain that goes untreated, and a lack of innovation in reproductive and gynaecological care.

By directing billions into this space, the Gates Foundation hopes to catalyse broader change and draw attention to what Gates called “a blind spot in global health.”

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