In many ways, the world has gotten better in the last 15 years, as childhood mortality, maternal mortality and poverty have dropped. The urgent question now, Melinda Gates said Thursday, is how to build on that progress.
Speaking from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Gates evoked the three goals she and her husband, Bill Gates, outlined for 2016:
- Supporting global institutions that seek to eradicate the world's problems.
- Driving efforts toward supporting women and girls.
- Investing in technological innovation.
In order to maintain momentum on these goals, it is crucial that leaders and organizations unite around a global strategy, Gates told The Huffington Post's Caroline Modarressy-Tehrani.
"We have to make sure that these institutions that we've set up -- something called the Global Fund that fights HIV, tuberculosis and malaria -- that we keep funding that as a world," Gates said. "They're the ones that give out the great malaria medications, make sure that the clinics are stocked, make sure the bed nets are there."
Elimination of diseases and other issues must begin on the local level before it can spread globally, Gates added.
"We have to keep stepping up these challenges," she said.
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