Gates: Climate change will exacerbate child health crisis due to malnutrition

By Jennifer Rigby

LONDON (Reuters) – Malnutrition is the world's worst child health crisis and climate change will only make the situation worse, says Microsoft co-founder turned philanthropist Bill Gates.

As a result of climate change, between now and 2050, an additional 40 million children will suffer from stunting and 28 million more from wasting, the most extreme and irreversible form of malnutrition, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation said in a report on Tuesday.

“If you don't get the right nutrition in the womb and in the first few years of life, you'll never catch up,” Gates said in an online interview with Reuters last week, referring to a child's physical and mental performance, both of which are affected by inadequate nutrition. Children who don't get enough of the right food are also more susceptible to diseases such as measles and malaria and die early.

“About 90 percent of the negative impacts of climate change affect the food system. There are years when crops basically fail due to drought or too much rain,” he said.

Gates was speaking ahead of the release of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's annual Goalkeepers report, which tracks progress toward the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of poverty reduction and health improvement. The report includes the above predictions.

In 2023, the World Health Organization estimated that 148 million children would suffer from stunting and 45 million from wasting.

Gates called for more funding for nutrition, particularly through a new platform led by UNICEF to coordinate funding from donors, the Child Nutrition Fund, and more research. But he said the money should not be diverted from other proven initiatives for this purpose, such as routine childhood vaccinations.

“(Nutrition) has not been adequately researched … it's eye-opening how important this is,” he added, saying initiatives such as food fortification or improving access to prenatal multivitamins could be as effective as some vaccines in improving child health in the world's poorest countries.

The Gates Foundation said in January it would spend more money on global health this year than ever before – $6.8 billion – as efforts to increase funding stalled.

(Reporting by Jennifer Rigby; Editing by Susan Fenton)