Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation ‘will fund any innovative charitable work’

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) is willing to extend a helping hand wherever innovation and technology can come to the aid of the poor in areas of health management.
“For instance, anyone who can utilize technology to ease the travails of refugees in the Jordanian deserts where water is needed can count on our help. Anybody who can provide water supply will have funds for his innovative solution to the water problem,” BMGF’s head of the Middle East Relations and Europeans Office Hassan Al-Damluji told Arab News in an exclusive interview on the sidelines of the just-concluded Arab Aid meeting.
This is for the first time that BMGF and other major International funding organizations were participating in the meeting.
Stating that the foundation relies on innovation and technology to find solution to the needs of the poor and children around the world, especially those afflicted with polio, he said the BMGF had strived hard to prevent 49 million childhood deaths in the past 15 years.
“What it means is that there are some people in the world who don’t have the chance to live a healthy life,” he said, adding that the foundation started on the premise that human lives have equal value, and as such, everyone deserves to live a healthy and productive life.
The foundation has four core values — collaboration, optimism, innovation and technology. “Innovation is the core to everything we do,” he said.
“We spend between $3-4 billion every year in this developmental program, and we spent over $1 billion in the Islamic world,” Al-Damluji said, adding that his mission was to deepen the relationship that they have in the region, especially with the foundation.
He said there are several factors that the foundation tries to address including the basic barrier that prevents people in some parts of the world from leading a healthy and productive life. “We believe diseases affect children under the age of five, and we are focusing on this area,” he said.
Citing the example of children from northern Pakistan who are still vulnerable to polio, he said the same disease had been eradicated from England and the US. Malaria in Africa affects children and many of them die or are disabled for the rest of their lives. “The burden that the family carries affects their life, which is important to us,” he said.
“In addition to checking spread of polio, we also focus a lot on agriculture, because most of the poor in the world are farmers. Their livelihood is food because it feeds their families, besides providing some income to buy basic things like clothing and for education of their kids,” he said.
Al-Damluji said: “We are a donor and funding organization that works with over 1,200 beneficiary organizations, big and small, to carry out our mission which will have an impact on targeted children and families. We work with other partners and donors, who are best in the field.”
Stating that the Foundation invests heavily in research and development (R&D), he said: “When we fund organizations, it is not necessarily to find a solution or to expand our area of operation. We spend a lot of money on academic institutions from where we expect solutions to problems. For example, it could be a new vaccine that could be cheaper or a new technology that would allow a farmer to get better yield,” he said.
“Our focus is primarily on sub-Sahara in Africa, South Asia and parts of China. The Middle East is also an important region for us, since it is not merely because it has pockets of poverty but also because it throws up solutions to problems. This is evident from the willingness and the history of global development that the region has to offer as also the powerful voices that exist in this region,” he said.
He said it will be an achievement for the foundation if poverty levels go down. “We will be happy to see children leading a healthy life. In the last 20 years, what we have been doing has contributed to that. Vaccination coverage has gone up.”
According to Al-Damluji , one of the challenges they face is the tight budget. “There are pressures on aid spending and many countries around the world are cutting down on such expenditure. The problem we are trying to solve requires innovation and intelligence which also requires funding,” he said.
He said some of the most important global gains were poverty reduction and improving health over the last ten years in difficult environs.