Since it was set up 20 years ago, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has been one of the biggest sources of development funding. Based on its own 2020 figures, the foundation has spent around $60.1 billion on grants in the last two decades.
Among its program areas, health has emerged as one of its top priorities.
Gates has seven major funding themes, one of which is global health — its program focused on reducing global health inequality. According to the Gates Foundation’s 2020 annual report, its most recent, it spent $1.8 billion on global health grants. This represented 30.8% of its spending that year.