Lancet finds bugs in Gates billion $ donations
By Bala Shah

The Lancet is universally regarded as a leading medical journal which has quality, in-depth articles about the field of medicine.  Founded in 1823, The Lancet remains totally independent without affiliation to a medical or scientific organization. Bill Gates co-founded Microsoft to become the richest man in the world. Today, Microsoft has cash reserves of $25 billion.

On the urging of his mother, Bill Gates started donating most of his money to charity.  He liked it so much that he has retired from Microsoft to devote his life to philanthropic causes.  One of the world’s most successful investors, Warren Buffet, has donated tens of billions of dollars to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has won universal admiration for donating tens of billions to charity.  In India, a number of charities, NGOs and medical organizations are grateful to the Gates family for their generous donations.

Now the Lancet has just published an in-depth review of ‘The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's grant-making programme for global health’.  The report by Dr. David McCoy also has a number of Indian origin researchers - Gayatri Kembhavi and Jinesh Patel.

The Lancet article starts off by saying: “The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is a major contributor to global health; its influence on international health policy and the design of global health programmes and initiatives is profound. Although the foundation's contribution to global health generally receives acclaim, fairly little is known about its grant-making programme. We undertook an analysis of 1094 global health grants awarded between January, 1998, and December, 2007. We found that the total value of these grants was US$8•95 billion, of which $5•82 billion (65%) was shared by only 20 organisations. Nevertheless, a wide range of global health organisations, such as WHO, the GAVI Alliance, the World Bank, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, prominent universities, and non-governmental organisations received grants. $3•62 billion (40% of all funding) was given to supranational organisations. Of the remaining amount, 82% went to recipients based in the USA. Just over a third ($3•27 billion) of funding was allocated to research and development (mainly for vaccines and microbicides), or to basic science research. The findings of this report raise several questions about the foundation's global health grant-making programme, which needs further research and assessment.”

The Lancet feels that "The foundation's emphasis on technology can detract attention from the basic causes of health problems and can skew the health-spending priorities of poor countries”.  The Lancet recommends that more money should be spent on basics like shelter, food, water and employment.

In those 10 years, the Gates Foundation donated the same amount of money for global health as the World Health Organization budget for 2007.  But the Lancet feel that the “Gates Foundation is not accountable, nor is it open about the ways it sets priorities and awards grants”.

The Lancet feels that the donations are "driven by the interests and passions of the Gates family and that there should not be a ‘whimsical’ way to use such a powerful force for change”

While many would welcome such an audit of such a generous charity, few would find some of the Lancet comments as petty and churlish.  After all, if a man is donating tens of billions to charity, he has every right to give to which ever organization he thinks is doing a good job.

The Lancet had many good words for the Gates: "The Gates Foundation has added renewed dynamism, credibility and attractiveness to global health”. In that sense, the Lancet has published a balanced article.

Much to the credit of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, they have not taken offence at the Lancet article.  A Gates Foundation spokesperson welcome the Lancet article and promised they would take all its research into consideration while making future donations.