“It’s a huge setback,” Bill Gates, co-chair of the Foundation and a leading philanthropic funder of global health and development, told a media briefing on the report’s findings. It found that the pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on women, racial and ethnic minority communities and people living in extreme poverty. “After 20 consecutive years of declines in extreme poverty, we’ve now seen a reversal,” said Mark Suzman, chief executive of the Gates Foundation, in an interview with Reuters. “We’ve had nearly 40 million people thrown back into extreme poverty. While the scene is “bleak” right now, Gates said he was confident the world would emerge from the pandemic and resume progress towards the goals on improving global health.

Source: Hindustan Times September 15, 2020 03:14 UTC