The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has announced a five-year, $922 million commitment in support of efforts to address global nutrition and ensure that all women and children have the nutrition they need to live healthy and productive lives.

Announced at the first United Nations Food Systems Summit, the commitment will prioritize efforts to reach the most vulnerable women and children across food, health, and social protection systems, through four focus areas: fortifying commonly consumed foods with vitamins and minerals; increasing equitable consumption of safe, affordable, and nutritious diets by establishing evidence-based food systems and agricultural practices and policies; delivering high-impact interventions for pregnant and lactating women, infants, and young children who are malnourished; and funding research and innovation aimed at optimizing maternal health and nutrition and support the physical growth and neurodevelopment of young children.

According to the foundation, the estimated cost of malnutrition on the global economy could be as high as $3.5 trillion per year, yet global nutrition continues to be an underinvested area of health and development, accounting for less than 1 percent of global foreign aid. Moreover, hunger increased in 2020, likely due to the COVID-19 pandemic; recent data estimates that about a tenth of the global population were undernourished last year, while three billion people lacked access to healthy diets. Undernutrition remains the underlying cause of nearly half of all child deaths, and the world is currently not on track to achieve targets for any nutrition indicators by 2030.

"Nutrition is fundamental to better health and to an equitable COVID recovery. Yet both malnutrition rates and aid levels are moving in the wrong direction," said Gates Foundation co-chair Melinda French Gates. "This funding will help more people around the world get the nutrition they need to live a healthy life, and we hope it serves as an invitation for more donors, foundations, governments, and private-sector leaders to build on today's investment with more bold commitments."

"With just nine years left to meet the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, good nutrition is a driver of every global goal," said Chris Elias, president of the foundation's Global Development Division. "That's why improved nutrition has always been a goal of our foundation, and will continue to be."

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