Bill Gates Has Helped Save The Lives Of 122 Million Children

Getty

Apparently – despite all the turmoil – 2017 is the safest time to be alive as a child.

According to statistics collated by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in their annual letter, 122 million children have been saved since 1990. After billionaire Warren Buffet donation the bulk of his fortune to the charitable foundation, he doubled their resources.

Buffet’s gift enabled the Gates’ NGO to bolster the existing global effort to stop children dying from sickness and poverty – and they’ve shared the happy consequences on Gates Notes.

In their annual letter, Bill wrote:

If we could show you only one number that proves how life has changed for the poorest, it would be 122 million—the number of children’s lives saved since 1990.

More children survived in 2015 than in 2014. More survived in 2014 than in 2013, and so on. If you add it all up, 122 million children under age five have been saved over the past 25 years. These are children who would have died if mortality rates had stayed where they were in 1990.

The Economist Newspaper Limited

Melinda added:

Every September, the UN announces the number of children under five who died the previous year. Every year, this number breaks my heart and gives me hope. It’s tragic that so many children are dying, but every year more children live.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have endeavoured to end child poverty, channelling their foundation’s efforts into stopping newborn and child mortality through a number of operations.

They want to give all women ‘the life-saving, poverty-ending’ access to contraceptives, family planning service and guaranteeing all pregnant women a healthy and safe childbirth.

Their foundation has also campaigned for the increase of child vaccines available worldwide. Coverage for the basic package of childhood vaccines is now the highest it’s ever been, at 86 percent.

WHO/UNICEF

The letter culminates in a message of unrelenting optimism. Although most people think poverty is at its worst, in fact, things are not as bad as they seem.

There is always more to be done as long as children are dying from preventable plagues on society.

But the statistics show these global efforts make all the difference.

Francesca Donovan

A former emo kid who talks too much about 8Chan meme culture, the Kardashian Klan, and how her smartphone is probably killing her. Francesca is a Cardiff University Journalism Masters grad who has done words for BBC, ELLE, The Debrief, DAZED, an art magazine you’ve never heard of and a feminist zine which never went to print.