Bill Gates: Shrinking Global Health Funding Will Cause Rise In Childhood Mortality Rates

Gates Foundation co-founder Bill Gates said childhood mortality rates are expected to rise this year after a decadeslong drop, amid global cuts to health funding.

In an interview with POLITICO’s Dasha Burns for “The Conversation,” Gates said his foundation has contributed to effectively halving the number of childhood deaths since its start in 2000, noting the plummet in deaths signified a “miracle” in global health care.

But as wealthy nations like the U.S. have pulled back their health funding, Gates’ nonprofit, the Gates Foundation, found childhood deaths are expected to rebound in 2025 due to the lagging funds.

“We increased the amount of money for the first 25 years and now we’re decreasing the money, and it’s not surprising that’s resulting in more deaths,” Gates said in the interview, which was conducted last week.

President Donald Trump has slashed global health funding since his return to office earlier this year, and handfuls of wealthy European countries have also cut their aid — sparking a 15-year-low in global health funding in 2025.

In its most recent Goalkeepers Report — an annual report card from the Gates Foundation measuring progress on the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals — the foundation estimated that 4.8 million children could die before their fifth birthday this year due to inadequate health care access, an increase by over 200,000 since 2024.

The report also sketches a broader framework for future global health innovation that does “more with less,” by investing in interventions like strong primary health systems and vaccines and prioritizing health care options that “stretch each and every dollar.”

Gates said the lagging funds globally are blocking children from getting access to resources like vaccines — a crucial step in continuing to reduce mortality rates.

The foundation earlier this year announced it would invest $1.6 billion over the next five years to support Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance — a global health partnership working to boost immunization access internationally — to combat the funding cuts.

“The whole global health movement has a lot to celebrate that we cut that death level in half,” Gates said of the progress since 2000. “So it's only with the understanding of how far we've come that you can say, 'OK, that setback after the 25 years of the greatest reduction in childhood death ever in human history, that now we're seeing that reversal.'”

The full interview with Gates is available on next week’s episode of “The Conversation.”