Billionaire Bill Gates is reportedly called on the White House to retain the financing of global health programs – and warns that his own foundation is unable to fill in gaps.
The co-founder of Microsoft recently met with the National Security Council and legislators on both sides of the corridor, Reuters reported, referring to two sources familiar with the matter.
“Bill was recently in Washington, DC, and met with decision makers to discuss the life-saving impact of US international assistance and the need for a strategic plan to protect the world’s most vulnerable while protecting the health and safety of America,” a Gates Foundation spokesman told the news agency.
Gates allegedly told officials that his foundation could not replace the role of federal assistance, and that directors of the Gates Foundation also publicly said that no foundation has the ability. The non -profit budget last year amounted to $ 8.6 billion – a fraction of what Trump and his team cut in foreign aid.
The independent Requests for comments from the Foundation were not immediately returned.
The move comes after President Donald Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency dissolved the US Agency for International Development.
On Tuesday, a federal judge ruled that attempts to close the agency “probably violated the Constitution in various ways” and temporarily blocked the Elon Musk-led Department to access any agency systems and “do any work” related to the closure of the agency. It remains unclear when the Trump administration will recover USAID.
Previous cuts have led to life-saving health and humanitarian services for millions collapsing, including $ 54 billion in foreign aid contracts.
The US has funded 70 percent of the global response for HIV/AIDS, according to a Vox Analysis. A recent report in The New York Times found that the loss of the President’s AIDS relief emergency plan killed a ten-year-old boy in South Sudan. Without US foreign aid for HIV prevention and treatment, 1.65 million people can die within a year, it says. The World Health Organization said on Monday that the offer of HIV treatments in eight countries had “substantially disrupted” since the US had interrupted foreign aid.
Projects under the AIDS Aid Plan are shortlisted for the administration, led by the State Department of Marco Rubio, a source said Reuterswith 30 projects considered.
Last week, Johns Hopkins University said its non-profit global health fellow Jhpiego, who works to prevent and contain the spread of HIV, malaria, tuberculosis and other deadly diseases, has been affected and that the university has been forced to fade many of its awards-related activities.
Founded in 2000, the Gates Foundation committed hundreds of millions of dollars to malaria research and HIV and sickle cell treatment.
“To date, we have committed more than $ 3 billion to HIV grants to organizations around the world and nearly $ 3 billion to the World Fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria,” the foundation website noted.
In his discussion, a source said that gates focused on organizations that matched the shortlisted soil priorities, as well as supporting the support of the United Nations World Health Organization. On the first day of his second term, Trump signed an executive order that began the withdrawal of America from the agency. The director-general of the agency, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, also called on the administration to reconsider the withdrawal of funding for international aid programs.
“The US administration was exceptionally generous over many years.
Experts believe this withdrawal will have long -term impacts.
“The irony is that we cannot know the real impact of the withdrawal of help because the executive orders also eliminated data collection such as the famine -free warning system so that we are unable to calculate the effect of the retreat of humanitarian aid,” said Michael vanroen, director of the Harvard Humanitiate.
With reporting of the Associated Press
