Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, gestures during the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, January 25, 2018. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

LONDON (Reuters) – In a world still reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic, the threat of climate change, rising energy costs and war in Ukraine, the lives of the world’s poorest nations are at stake. It is becoming increasingly difficult to ask the world to prioritize saving the According to Bill Gates.

The Microsoft co-founder turned philanthropist said that funding to tackle diseases such as malaria and AIDS could actually decline this year following major threats to global health. It’s a paradox,” he said.

In an interview with Reuters last week, Gates said, “I’m very worried … Ironically, despite the clearest indication of why infectious diseases are not a thing of the past, funds are actually The level of procurement may decline,” he said.

He spoke ahead of the release of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s annual Goalkeeper Report, which tracks progress on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on reducing poverty and improving health.

According to the report, the pandemic has thrown the world off track in almost every indicator, and progress on issues such as reducing maternal mortality and ending malnutrition will require 5 You have to double the speed.

“It’s hard to overstate how much of a setback the pandemic has been, and how much the war in Ukraine has been,” Gates said, noting that global health had improved in most areas before 2019. pointed out that

“Saving lives and caring for the poorest countries in Africa will challenge us to keep them as a priority and not reduce them,” he added.

Gates is putting more of his own money into the foundation this year and plans to increase its annual budget from $6 billion to $9 billion by 2026, but he is concerned about competing pressures on donor government budgets. I said yes.

But Gates said there is still hope, especially in areas like food security, if the world invests in innovation.

Reported by Jennifer Rigby.Edited by Chiju Nomiyama

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