One of the world’s most famous philanthropists, American billionaire Melinda French Gates yesterday announced a new initiative- $250 million, which will shape global women’s health. Dubbed Action for Women’s Health, funding to important health challenges among women today that range from lack of access to medical care, complications in pregnancy, malnutrition, and psychological problems including depression and anxiety, among others.
According to French Gates, in her statement, women’s health is considered more often than not an afterthought, with resultant effects toward having a destructive tendency both on the well-being of the individual and on the health of families, communities, and economies. She underscored a need to focus on women’s health to enable them to reach their full potential.
A new programme, which will also provide grants to organizations working anywhere in the world in enhancing the mental and physical well-being of women, includes grants between $1 million to $5 million or €912,000 to €4.6 million, which are mainly targeted towards the groups addressing core health needs, disabilities, aging, family-focused issues, including reproductive health.
This follows the recent announcement by French Gates, where she pledged $1 billion (€912 million) over the next two years through her philanthropic organization, Pivotal Ventures, into furthering women’s rights across the globe. This is an opportunity to empower women in line with the focus of priority attention placed on their health needs being properly met.
As much as US$12 billion was allocated to be invested by the year 2025. French Gates had already spoken of helping children in the United States have healthy minds. Again, this work continues her focus on social welfare. Having spent over two decades at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that she and her former husband founded, she resigned to fully concentrate on the agenda for Equality.
With these efforts, French Gates hopes for the creation of a healthy and empowered world of women to utilize their full potential meaningfully in society.
