Philanthropist Bill Gates has issued a stark warning that children born in northern Nigeria face a 15 percent risk of dying before their fifth birthday, calling on governments to reverse recent cuts to global health funding.
Speaking at a Reuters Newsmaker event in New York on Monday, Gates cautioned that progress achieved over the past two decades in reducing child mortality could be undone. Since 2000, global child deaths have been cut in half, saving about five million lives annually.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced a $912 million pledge to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, even as global development assistance plummeted by 21 percent between 2024 and 2025, reaching its lowest level in 15 years, according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
“Philanthropy alone cannot replace government support. I am not capable of making up what the government cuts, and I don’t want to create an illusion of that,” Gates said.
He stressed that sustained investments in organisations such as the Global Fund and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, alongside innovations like long-acting HIV prevention drugs, remain critical to saving millions of lives.
While most governments have scaled down contributions, Spain bucked the trend this year, increasing its funding to the Global Fund by 12 percent and to Gavi by 30 percent.
