Gates Foundation’s Grants to Fight Disease in Africa Produce Mixed Results

Grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which focuses on diseases like AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis, have inadvertently harmed basic health care in some parts of Africa, reports the Los Angeles Times.

The article — part of an investigative series into the foundation by the newspaper — says that because the foundation has awarded billions of dollars to treat those diseases, largely through vaccinations, doctors are paying less attention to the nutritional needs of patients with common ailments like diarrhea. Plus, many patients who receive treatment for diseases lack food and transportation for check-up appointments, which undermines the effectiveness of the treatments.

While grateful for the Gateses’ generosity in supporting vaccinations, doctors and aid workers told the newspaper that other measures to treat diseases might be more effective.

Tadataka Yamada, president of the Gates Foundation’s global-health program, said the philanthropy recognized such challenges and was studying ways it could improve health-care delivery systems in Africa. But he noted that the foundation believed African governments should pay for health-care delivery. “What we do is catalyze,” he told the newspaper, by providing tools to help governments improve. “We are not replacement mothers.”

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