Gates Foundation $8.6 Billion Budget to Save and Improve Lives in 2024

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation today announced its largest annual budget to date as it works toward a healthier, more prosperous world for all. 

Its board of trustees formally approved the foundation’s $8.6 billion 2024 budget on January 13, 2024. The new budget represents an increase of 4% over 2023.

At the foundation’s “The Future of Health” event at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, Bill Gates will showcase several health innovations the foundation has funded and its partners have been developing.

“We can’t talk about the future of humanity without talking about the future of health,” said Bill Gates, co-chair of the Gates Foundation, in a press release on January 15, 2024.

To emphasize that many solutions are simple, portable, and already close at hand, Gates and other foundation leaders will carry backpacks in Davos emblazoned with “The Future of Health” and examples of products that could save millions of lives. They include, but are not limited to:

A one-dose HPV vaccine that helps protect against one of the most common cancers among women worldwide. 

With a one-dose HPV vaccine, the barriers to vaccination are much lower, and efficacy remains high and lasting. Modeling estimates that more than 110 million cases of cervical cancer can be averted as the one-dose regimen is rolled out, in part through Gavi.

Vaccine microneedle array patches can deliver vaccines through the skin without traditional needles, a complex cold chain, or a highly trained health worker to administer them. 

Early trials show these patches deliver the measles-rubella vaccine as safely and effectively as syringes and produce a similar immune response. This can help protect the hardest-to-reach children.

The incremental resources for 2024, both financial and human capital, seek to accelerate efforts for the most significant impact across the foundation’s diverse priorities, ranging from polio eradication to scaling child azithromycin delivery in the world’s highest mortality settings to improving digital courseware in postsecondary education to accelerating the world’s TB drug portfolio, says the Gates Foundation.

The unedited announcement is available at this link.