It is a silent tragedy that rich countries and their citizens prefer to forget. They look elsewhere, caught up as they are in their current concerns: war in Ukraine, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, inflation, rise of populism… However, the figures are there, striking, alarming: 400 million children in the world do not have enough to eat. “In some countries, up to 40% of children are malnourished. They do not develop properly, neither physically nor intellectually, they are more fragile and are twice as likely to die before the age of 5 if they are affected by pneumonia, malaria or diarrhea,” recalls Bill Gates in an interview with L’Express on the occasion of the publication of Goalkeepers, the annual report of the foundation co-founded with his ex-wife Melinda. Because he is convinced that all this suffering linked to lack of food is not inevitable, the billionaire has chosen this year to focus on this sad reality.
After several decades of progress, marked by a sharp decline in poverty, maternal and infant mortality, and infections (HIV, malaria, tuberculosis, etc.), all progress has been halted since the pandemic. The explanation? Very simple: “The amounts devoted to development aid in general, and to Africa in particular, are decreasing, it’s tragic,” laments Bill Gates. Without a change of direction, the situation will even deteriorate in the years to come, particularly as a result of global warming. By 2050, 68 million more children could suffer from severe malnutrition due to climate change, according to calculations by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, a statistics institute co-founded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. “If you organize a meeting on climate, like recently in Dubai, thousands of people come. With infant mortality, on the other hand, it is much more difficult to attract crowds. Yet the most affected by global warming are children in poor countries. Climate change is particularly weakening the agricultural systems of these countries, and the youngest are the first victims,” insists Bill Gates.
The good news is that there are solutions to save these children. “We have long supported a lot of research on nutrition, and we have demonstrated the feasibility and the interest of simple and inexpensive interventions, which have a significant impact”, underlines the president of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This is the case with vitamin cocktails intended for expectant mothers. These food supplements, to be taken in one go during pregnancy, contain about fifteen essential micronutrients (folic acid, iron, zinc, iodine, proteins, fatty acids, etc.). For $2.60 per pregnant woman, they prevent anemia in the mother and reduce the risk of the baby having a low birth weight, an additional factor of fragility.
Fortify bouillon cubes, improve agricultural yields
Another option is the addition of micronutrients to commonly used foods. An old practice: for several decades now, iodine, involved in the synthesis of thyroid hormones and in the brain growth of fetuses, has been added to table salt in many countries. “I have personally spent a lot of time meeting with producers of broths, rice, wheat or salt to see with them how, very concretely, to add vitamins to their products at a reduced cost”, explains Bill Gates. Today, Nigeria is considering “fortifying” with vitamin cocktails the famous “bouillon cubes”, one of the basic ingredients of local cuisine, present in almost all homes.
© / The Express
The Gates Foundation also advocates for improved agricultural practices in developing countries. For example, by increasing the productivity of dairy cows or chickens. “In Ethiopia, I was able to see that crossing highly productive European laying hen varieties with local varieties made a huge difference. We give chicks to mothers, they raise them and can feed their children with their eggs, but also sell them, which brings them additional financial resources,” says Bill Gates.
A new “Children’s Nutrition Fund”
His foundation also funds research on the intestinal microbiota, the billions of bacteria that populate our intestines. It plays a crucial role in health, but can be seriously disrupted in children who are both malnourished and exposed to many pathogens. The inflammation induced then prevents proper absorption of nutrients. “Trials with probiotics, cocktails of ‘good’ bacteria, are underway, and the initial data is very encouraging. Within two years, we should have sufficient proof of their effectiveness. We are working in parallel to reduce the cost sufficiently to consider distributing them on a large scale,” continues the founder of Microsoft.
Beyond the sums invested directly by the Foundation in the fight against malnutrition, its teams have also participated in the creation of a new international dedicated financing system, based on the model of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance: the Child Nutrition Fund. Under the aegis of UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Organization, this fund aims to coordinate funding dedicated to the fight against malnutrition, in order to allocate it as best as possible. The Foundation is contributing $70 million to this, out of an estimated need of $2 billion by 2030 – to be added to the even greater needs of Gavi and the Global Fund.
Will the rich countries be there? Beyond the moral obligation to allow all children, regardless of their place of birth, to eat their fill, Bill Gates does not lack arguments to encourage the various governments – and in particular that of France – to take up this challenge. “If we do not help Africans to live better in their countries, mass immigration will continue, and with it the political difficulties in Europe and the human tragedies in the Mediterranean. Paradoxically, the fight against malnutrition and infant mortality remains one of the most effective ways to succeed in the demographic transition: when parents know that their offspring will survive and reach adulthood, they have fewer children,” he notes.
A good health system is also an effective bulwark against pandemics, because it allows health warnings to be detected very early – but this would require an investment of $20 per person per year, when countries like Nigeria, strangled by interest on their debt, have only $5 per person per year. “That’s not all: if we help these states in their development and that of their citizens, they will be more stable and will also be able to become trading partners,” insists Bill Gates. Will he be heard?
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