Women’s health women are chronically underfuncible, says Melinda French Gates

The billionaire philanthrope Melinda French Gates said that women’s health was chronically underfunded, as it has signed up to $ 50 million to find the problem.

This is part of its commitment to invest $ 1 billion in the field over two years and will be used for new research on areas that present significant risks for women around the world, including autoimmune conditions and mental health.

According to women, around 80% of people living with autoimmune diseases are women, and depression is about 1.5 times more frequent in women than in men in the world, according to the World Health Organization.

Research will also focus on cardiovascular disease. Although it is a health problem for both sexes, it can affect them differently.

Women are more likely to have worse results after a heart attack, knowing higher rates of complications and mortality, often due to factors such as delayed diagnosis, less timely treatment and different symptoms compared to men, according to a study presented at the Scientific Congress of the European Cardiology Society.

The subsidy of the Pivotal Ventures organization of Ms. Gates will go to Us Ngo Wellcoma Leap, founded by the Wellcoma Trust, which will finance the new research.

Critics, however, argue that it is a long way to fight against the decades of chronic under-funding and the funds necessary to provide research on the health of women with equality with other areas of medicine.

Women’s health research has always been sub-financed and sub-poisoned with medical research dealing with the body of men as the defect.

In the United States, women of childbearing age have been mainly excluded from clinical medication trials in early phase between 1977 and 1993. Although this policy was largely a protective response after the birth of children with serious congenital malformations when their mothers took the medication at Thalidomide during pregnancy, which resulted in the systematic effects of women.

Even female rodents were often excluded from the tests, as researchers feared that hormonal changes do not complicate data analysis.

According to the Harvard Medical, women represented approximately 42% of participants in clinical cancer trials, cardiovascular disease and psychiatric disorders.

Wellcome Leap is one of the largest health research networks in the world, which includes more than 160 institutions on six continents, including countries such as South Africa, Nigeria, Rwanda, Guatemala, Brazil, Singapore, Japan and Australia.

“Women’s health is chronically underfunded, underdetermined in a chronically and, therefore, not well understood,” said Melinda French Gates, adding that we hope that we will see progress “of years, even decades, earlier that we will do it through other approaches … The results will affect the lives of women all over the world”.

Women are faced with significant health inequalities, despite life longer than men.

A health report in 2024 by the consulting company McKinsey found that in average, women spent an additional nine years in poor health compared to men.

He declared that this disparity was linked to their historical sub-statement in research and to the greatest probability of being poorly diagnosed. He concluded that this under-investment had left the crucial areas of the health of neglected women.

“We need more breakthroughs, and we need it faster,” adds Regina Dugan, CEO of Wellcoma Leap. “Women have waited long enough.”

Wellcome Leap has committed to help reduce the life risk of women in Alzheimer’s women – a degenerative disease that women are twice as likely to develop as men, according to Alzheimer’s society – by financing research on the question of whether menopause hormone therapy can have protective effects on the health of the brain and potentially reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease or decline cognitive.

However, some leading workers say that high-level Western funding models like this can sometimes end up bypassing them.

Serley EISS, Executive Director of the Lidar Community Foundation in Windhoek, Namibia, who works with vulnerable women and girls, says that she does not receive funding from Western donors due to a lack of advertising for her organization.

She tells the BBC that she believes that “a lasting impact for the mental health of women comes from investment in basic organizations, community -oriented organizations that provide safe spaces, psychosocial care and practical opportunities for education and income”.

“We certainly understand this concern,” a spokesperson for Wellcoma Leap at the BBC, adding that they are working with local teams in thirty countries.

“The programs are designed to produce breakthroughs which can be implemented on a large scale in collaboration with researchers, clinicians, as well as those of basic organizations.”

The Women’s Health Father Commission is more than a moral imperative – it is also economical, according to the World Economic Forum and McKinsey.

A report they published in 2024 estimated that the Women’s Health Lake Commission could add $ 1 billion to the world economy each year by 2040.

These gains would come from the reduction in health care costs, increased productivity and a stronger workforce motivated by better health results for women.