Melinda Gates: Lives Are Not 'Line Item' Budget Costs

by Rachel Christiansen

With sensitivity of the national budget on the front lines, Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, voiced her support of continued U.S. foreign aid.

In light of the 100th Anniversary of International Women’s Day, Gates told of her personal experience interacting with the suffering women and children abroad at a CARE conference in Washington on Wednesday. 

“Our celebration is mixed with a little bit of anxiety, because many of the programs that we so much count on for women and children depend on the survival of the government’s support,” she said.

Gates spoke of the millions of women and children being saved globally on a daily basis because of the investments being made in health care.

“We’re not just haggling over a line item in a government’s budget,” Gates argued. “We’re talking about a life, a child’s precious life. What more could be important than that?” 

The smartest investments we can make, according to Gates, is to invest in vaccines, which can be credited with nearly eradicating deadly diseases such as polio and smallpox.

Gates recently spent time in Eastern Kenya, one of the areas worst hit by poverty and hunger, where she is developing agricultural research centers as well as fighting to immunize children against pnemonia.