The Year in Global Development: Strengthening Primary Care and Empowering Women and Girls
As the end of the year approaches, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is taking stock of the progress that’s been made in global health and development, creating a webpage — with an embedded video — detailing the highlights of 2018. Here’s a look at some of the biggest accomplishments in global development, as well as the places where we need to accelerate our efforts. And be sure to check out the work of the foundation’s other three areas of focus: global health, global policy and advocacy, and global growth and opportunity.
The Fight Against Polio: In 2018, the circulation of wild poliovirus was pushed into the smallest geographic footprint that it has ever occupied. While 2018 has seen 27 cases of wild poliovirus so far — an increase over 2017’s 22 cases — wild poliovirus remains only in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and Nigeria hasn’t reported a wild poliovirus case in more than two years. In 2019, we will need continued commitment from donors to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative to create a world where no child will ever again suffer the terrible, lifelong effects of polio.
Strengthening Primary Health Care (PHC): This year we saw increased global and country support for strengthening primary health care (PHC) systems, which can cover more than 80% of a person’s lifetime health needs. The Vital Signs Profile — an important new tool to help low- and middle-income countries measure the strength of their PHC system and pinpoint areas for improvement — was launched in October at a global conference focused on the critical importance of primary health care in achieving universal health coverage.
Progress in Family Planning: More women than ever are using contraceptives in low-income countries. Thanks to the work of the FP2020 partnership, an estimated 46 million more women are using contraceptives than in 2012. But we need to acknowledge — with just two years to go — that we are unlikely to meet FP2020’s original goal of empowering 120 million women with the resources they need to decide if and when to have children. In 2019, FP2020 and its partners will focus on what we can do together to accelerate progress toward the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals and the commitment that world leaders have made to ensuring universal access to family planning.
Global Financing Facility (GFF): This year, the Global Financing Facility in support of Every Woman and Every Child mobilized over $1 billion in new commitments and gained 10 new donors. The GFF has become the largest lever in the world for strengthening the impact of country-level investments in reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health and nutrition. The GFF can play a central role in helping countries eliminate preventable maternal, newborn and child deaths through the development and implementation of country investment cases.
