Melinda Gates: Trump’s proposed budget is ‘misguided’ when it comes to global health and development

Another expert says the budget, if passed, 'will kill large numbers of people'

Melinda Gates speaks on stage on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly on 19 September 2017. (Monica Schipper/Getty Images for Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation)

Melinda Gates has said US President Donald Trump’s budget proposal is a “misguided approach to global health and development.”

The philanthropist and co-founder of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation said the cuts to international health programmes proposed in the new defence-focused budget would leave the US open to pandemics.

“The fact that we already had health workers on the ground in Nigeria fighting polio was a key reason we were able to contain the last Ebola epidemic before it reached our shores...Make no mistake: foreign aid funding protects American lives, too,” Ms Gates said in a statement.

She also noted that the budget, if passed by Congress, would harm women seeking family planning services.

Ms Gates said family planning, which includes contraception and prenatal care, are a “matter of life and death” for many women around the world.

“Without the ability to plan and space their pregnancies, women are more likely to die in childbirth, their babies are less likely to survive childhood, and more vulnerable families are trapped in a cycle of poverty,” she added.

Dr Jeffrey Sachs, an economic development expert and professor at Columbia University, told The Independent that the budget proposal is “remarkably cruel” and “will kill large numbers of people.”

Regarding the required Congressional approval for the budget, Mr Sachs said that “Congress will certainly not go along with most of it, but this Congress will go along with some of it.”

Mr Sachs pointed to the “enormous success” of the Presidential Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (PEPFAR) begun during former President George W Bush’s administration as an example that criticism of the Trump administration’s budget is not about domestic politics of “left vs. right.”

PEPFAR makes up two-thirds of the US global health budget and has continued to get funding because it is effective in containing new infection rates on the African continent.

Part of the success is due to its sustained funding, Mr Sachs noted.

Meanwhile, the defence budget has been proposed to be $686 billion, a 13 per cent increase from 2017.

However, there is support within the defence community for not slashing funding to global development and health programmes within the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the Millennium Challenge Corporation, and Peace Corps.

More than 150 retired generals and admirals called them and the State Department “America’s essential civilian national security agencies.”

Mr Sachs noted that Mr Trump is not the only president with a sub-par record on global health and development either.

Former President Barack Obama “was no hero when it came to aid,” he said.

He added, "the US was already irresponsible in what little it did,” but the issue now is that Mr Trump wants to further cut that down though US taxpayers share of income going towards aid is the lowest among wealthy nations.

One portion of the budget actually mentions a new programme instead of a cut.

The administration said it wanted to open a new office "that will build the capacity and capability of developing countries and the private sector to drive sustainable change and economic growth, and thereby...reduce risks and costs to the American taxpayer."

Mr Sachs warned that the "extreme" focus on the "magic of the market" that USAID and even the UK Department for International Development (DFID) could be detrimental to aid goals because the private sector has different priorities.