well Melinda and Bill Gates thank you so
much for joining me to talk about this
goalkeepers report with National
Geographic we really appreciate your
time why did you decide to start doing
this report in the first place
well we decided to start doing it
because we think that the news that the
world has made this incredible progress
that news isn’t really out there and yet
the UN set these amazing goals for the
future to help us really continue to
reduce poverty and we want to make sure
that we hold people accountable for that
progress we let them know what’s
happened and really inspire the next
generation of leaders who are going to
take these tasks on we want them to know
how tough the work is we want them to
feel great about what’s going on we
don’t want to just wait till the end of
the period and see that things were off
track one of the things that I saw as
the how much progress there’s been made
in Rwanda I was recently in Rwanda and
it just astonishes me that just a
generation after this terrible genocide
there is so much progress going on and
you talked about Rwanda having the
steepest drop in child mortality of any
place and I guess the question then is
how do you get these kids not just to
survive but to thrive what are you
seeing in some of the different
countries who’s doing a great job and
where does more progress need to be made
well the idea that even a very poor
country can do a good job on health can
do a good job on agriculture even on
education that provides a lot of hope
because you can copy what’s being done
there Rwanda has been a big outlier and
the quality of those health services but
it’s when you get those three things
together health education agriculture
that eventually these countries can
become self-sufficient and so you know
when people think of poverty they think
oh it’s just a binary thing there’s the
poor and then there
sauce understanding there’s a lot of
milestones along the way including
getting to what we call middle income
that that is within reach for a lot of
these countries people you know should
have that clearly in mind in a what are
the steps that are helping to get
countries there faster I think one of
the things that’s also encouraging if
you take a country like Rwanda or you
take a country like Ethiopia Rhonda’s a
very small country Ethiopia is quite a
large country second-largest on the
content of Africa but they have learned
the lessons that of what has made help
people make progress from around the
world and that makes us optimistic when
you see it actually being implemented
and implemented in the way those
countries are if there was just one
thing you could fix what would it be and
I’d want to ask each of you just one the
magic wand here well I would say
certainly contraceptives giving a woman
an access to a basket of contraceptives
that she can choose which one she wants
to use at which point in her life or
points in her life so that she can space
the births of her children it changes
everything for her and for her children
so if I could make wait wave a magic
wand
200 million women who are asking us for
contraceptives today what happened bill
what would be yours well the development
of these children because of
malnutrition means that in Africa today
over half the kids never develop
physically or mentally and that has to
do with things going on with their diet
and the disease they face and so I’m
super excited that it looks like we’ll
understand that and be able to have
interventions cheap interventions that
means that those kids will fully develop
and that means all the investments you
make in their education wanting to
benefit from their productivity will
work far better and so you know we’re
not just failing the kids who die that
5%
we’re also failing the
fifty percent who are held back
nutritionally you don’t hear
I mean wrongly perhaps you don’t hear
that much about HIV anymore because both
prevention and treatment have really
improved so much I know in other
countries that is not so much the case
but there is such a disparity so in
South Africa there’s still a huge HIV
problem a country like Zimbabwe
you know both here on the African
continent seems to really have conquered
that what are you seeing in the in the
differences with how those countries are
handling that problem
well the southern part in the eastern
part of Africa for the brunt to the
epidemic where 80% of the cases are
there girl by the time she finishes her
20s the majority are infected it’s made
a huge difference to get the drugs in
and save these lives and so the death
rate has gone down a lot we have to look
at every country and say ok are they
doing a good job with the different
communities mother-to-child a lot of
countries have done well to reduce that
you have some stigmatized communities
like drug using communities or sex
workers or men who have have sex with
men now diving in and saying okay what
are the tactics the prevention tactics
that are working in each of those I mean
even in the United States you have to
bring down stigma so that people can
talk about it and know where to go for
treatment know where to go for testing
and I think when we first were traveling
in Africa and and AIDS was being talked
about in Africa there was an enormous
amount of stigma and so particularly in
South Africa and I think one of the
biggest concerns as bill said is is for
young women in particular there’s so
much AIDS in the community and there a
chance of acquiring it is very high and
so continuing to get the messages out
about what can you do to protect
yourself getting yourself tested and
also the other message that really needs
to be out there and is
he’s widely getting out in Africa is
really about family planning tools and
that’s even separate from hiv/aids it’s
important for many reasons when you
think about learning from one another I
was struck by this example from Vietnam
which is not a rich country but there
you’ve got those 15 year olds who are
doing as well on these international
tests and school as people from the UK
or from the US what you know what are
the lessons from Vietnam that can
perhaps translate across other countries
bill talks about his education I talk
about my own we all care about our kids
getting educated and it’s this universal
truth when we go out and talk to parents
in the developing world we might be
there to talk about health or
agriculture
but if you ever ask a parent anywhere in
the world what their hopes and dreams
are they talk about their kids and they
know education is the thing that will
lift their kids up and give them a
different opportunity agenda for poor
countries up until now it’s largely been
get the kids into school which is
fantastic the biggest missing piece
still is how much knowledge they’re
gaining and so a few countries by
training the teachers the right way
bringing the right material into the
classroom have really achieved way
beyond what you might expect and of
course that human capital the both the
healthiness and the education of young
generation that predicts their future as
much as their current income level does
when you look back the UN Millennium
Goals that were set one of the goals was
to get kids into school and that has
essentially been achieved but now with
this next set of goals it’s about the
fidelity of how do you get the depth of
learning and education right and I think
that’s what a set of goals can do when
it’s set by nations around the world
family planning is crucial anywhere any
community you’re in around the world
because if a woman can decide if and
when to have a child she’s gonna be
healthier and her child’s gonna be
healthier it’s one of the longest
standing pieces of global research
health research we have that there are
200 million
who are asking us for our family
planning they want contraceptives and
the world hasn’t delivered that to them
and so we are finally making more
progress as a world it had been taken
off the global health agenda for a while
it’s back on as of 2012 can I ask why
was it taken off the global health and
agenda was it just too hard to talk
about yes it was became too hard to talk
about and too politicized
and quite a few negative things had
happened and I did want to turn that
your most which is that’s the completely
wrong approach you need to talk to women
and let them decide whether they want to
have children and I think what struck me
the most when I would travel in Africa
and still travel a lot is women know
about contraceptives and they want
access and they’re asking us and they’re
just not being delivered in the ways or
the places that they go but when you do
that then a woman and a man in their
family have the chance to lift their
family out of poverty because if they
can space the births of those children
they can then feed them they can educate
them the woman can work and contribute
her income to the family it changes
everything in the family dynamic and it
changes the community and ultimately you
get these country level effects where
it’s good for everybody so on the
continent of Africa today the most
popular type of family planning of
contraceptives is an injectable shot you
get actually pretty painful you get it
once a quarter but it means you have to
walk to a health clinic it has to be in
stock at the clinic you stand in line
and then you go home so it can be you
know five six hours by the time you get
it one of the things that’s coming along
that we’ve been involved in is a very
small it’s a little tiny needle a little
tiny blister pack that a healthcare
worker with her kit in a village can
give to him and ultimately women will be
able to self inject so you can give them
a supply they take at home they squeeze
it it’s a tiny little needle they
squeeze it into the arm and they’re done
it’s it’s a you know three week three
month supply of a family planning of a
contraceptive and the whole notion of
family planning is really tied up with
education – is it not you know the more
educated some of these women are young
women are the later they made
delay having children yeah that’s hugely
correlated you know as women get
educated as income goes up this child
death rates go down all these things
both sort of cause one another and help
reinforce those things so that you get
out of this poverty trap in a country
becomes self-sufficient and if you think
about reproductive health tools if you
think about contraceptives if a woman
has access to contraceptive she can
further her education so even in the
United States what allowed women to go
into the workforce in droves
it was the birth control pill so if we
want women to be able to get not only a
high school education but a university
education have their families later we
need to give them access to these tools
it will change everything in terms of
their empowerment and their role in society we know that
much for joining me to talk about this
goalkeepers report with National
Geographic we really appreciate your
time why did you decide to start doing
this report in the first place
well we decided to start doing it
because we think that the news that the
world has made this incredible progress
that news isn’t really out there and yet
the UN set these amazing goals for the
future to help us really continue to
reduce poverty and we want to make sure
that we hold people accountable for that
progress we let them know what’s
happened and really inspire the next
generation of leaders who are going to
take these tasks on we want them to know
how tough the work is we want them to
feel great about what’s going on we
don’t want to just wait till the end of
the period and see that things were off
track one of the things that I saw as
the how much progress there’s been made
in Rwanda I was recently in Rwanda and
it just astonishes me that just a
generation after this terrible genocide
there is so much progress going on and
you talked about Rwanda having the
steepest drop in child mortality of any
place and I guess the question then is
how do you get these kids not just to
survive but to thrive what are you
seeing in some of the different
countries who’s doing a great job and
where does more progress need to be made
well the idea that even a very poor
country can do a good job on health can
do a good job on agriculture even on
education that provides a lot of hope
because you can copy what’s being done
there Rwanda has been a big outlier and
the quality of those health services but
it’s when you get those three things
together health education agriculture
that eventually these countries can
become self-sufficient and so you know
when people think of poverty they think
oh it’s just a binary thing there’s the
poor and then there
sauce understanding there’s a lot of
milestones along the way including
getting to what we call middle income
that that is within reach for a lot of
these countries people you know should
have that clearly in mind in a what are
the steps that are helping to get
countries there faster I think one of
the things that’s also encouraging if
you take a country like Rwanda or you
take a country like Ethiopia Rhonda’s a
very small country Ethiopia is quite a
large country second-largest on the
content of Africa but they have learned
the lessons that of what has made help
people make progress from around the
world and that makes us optimistic when
you see it actually being implemented
and implemented in the way those
countries are if there was just one
thing you could fix what would it be and
I’d want to ask each of you just one the
magic wand here well I would say
certainly contraceptives giving a woman
an access to a basket of contraceptives
that she can choose which one she wants
to use at which point in her life or
points in her life so that she can space
the births of her children it changes
everything for her and for her children
so if I could make wait wave a magic
wand
200 million women who are asking us for
contraceptives today what happened bill
what would be yours well the development
of these children because of
malnutrition means that in Africa today
over half the kids never develop
physically or mentally and that has to
do with things going on with their diet
and the disease they face and so I’m
super excited that it looks like we’ll
understand that and be able to have
interventions cheap interventions that
means that those kids will fully develop
and that means all the investments you
make in their education wanting to
benefit from their productivity will
work far better and so you know we’re
not just failing the kids who die that
5%
we’re also failing the
fifty percent who are held back
nutritionally you don’t hear
I mean wrongly perhaps you don’t hear
that much about HIV anymore because both
prevention and treatment have really
improved so much I know in other
countries that is not so much the case
but there is such a disparity so in
South Africa there’s still a huge HIV
problem a country like Zimbabwe
you know both here on the African
continent seems to really have conquered
that what are you seeing in the in the
differences with how those countries are
handling that problem
well the southern part in the eastern
part of Africa for the brunt to the
epidemic where 80% of the cases are
there girl by the time she finishes her
20s the majority are infected it’s made
a huge difference to get the drugs in
and save these lives and so the death
rate has gone down a lot we have to look
at every country and say ok are they
doing a good job with the different
communities mother-to-child a lot of
countries have done well to reduce that
you have some stigmatized communities
like drug using communities or sex
workers or men who have have sex with
men now diving in and saying okay what
are the tactics the prevention tactics
that are working in each of those I mean
even in the United States you have to
bring down stigma so that people can
talk about it and know where to go for
treatment know where to go for testing
and I think when we first were traveling
in Africa and and AIDS was being talked
about in Africa there was an enormous
amount of stigma and so particularly in
South Africa and I think one of the
biggest concerns as bill said is is for
young women in particular there’s so
much AIDS in the community and there a
chance of acquiring it is very high and
so continuing to get the messages out
about what can you do to protect
yourself getting yourself tested and
also the other message that really needs
to be out there and is
he’s widely getting out in Africa is
really about family planning tools and
that’s even separate from hiv/aids it’s
important for many reasons when you
think about learning from one another I
was struck by this example from Vietnam
which is not a rich country but there
you’ve got those 15 year olds who are
doing as well on these international
tests and school as people from the UK
or from the US what you know what are
the lessons from Vietnam that can
perhaps translate across other countries
bill talks about his education I talk
about my own we all care about our kids
getting educated and it’s this universal
truth when we go out and talk to parents
in the developing world we might be
there to talk about health or
agriculture
but if you ever ask a parent anywhere in
the world what their hopes and dreams
are they talk about their kids and they
know education is the thing that will
lift their kids up and give them a
different opportunity agenda for poor
countries up until now it’s largely been
get the kids into school which is
fantastic the biggest missing piece
still is how much knowledge they’re
gaining and so a few countries by
training the teachers the right way
bringing the right material into the
classroom have really achieved way
beyond what you might expect and of
course that human capital the both the
healthiness and the education of young
generation that predicts their future as
much as their current income level does
when you look back the UN Millennium
Goals that were set one of the goals was
to get kids into school and that has
essentially been achieved but now with
this next set of goals it’s about the
fidelity of how do you get the depth of
learning and education right and I think
that’s what a set of goals can do when
it’s set by nations around the world
family planning is crucial anywhere any
community you’re in around the world
because if a woman can decide if and
when to have a child she’s gonna be
healthier and her child’s gonna be
healthier it’s one of the longest
standing pieces of global research
health research we have that there are
200 million
who are asking us for our family
planning they want contraceptives and
the world hasn’t delivered that to them
and so we are finally making more
progress as a world it had been taken
off the global health agenda for a while
it’s back on as of 2012 can I ask why
was it taken off the global health and
agenda was it just too hard to talk
about yes it was became too hard to talk
about and too politicized
and quite a few negative things had
happened and I did want to turn that
your most which is that’s the completely
wrong approach you need to talk to women
and let them decide whether they want to
have children and I think what struck me
the most when I would travel in Africa
and still travel a lot is women know
about contraceptives and they want
access and they’re asking us and they’re
just not being delivered in the ways or
the places that they go but when you do
that then a woman and a man in their
family have the chance to lift their
family out of poverty because if they
can space the births of those children
they can then feed them they can educate
them the woman can work and contribute
her income to the family it changes
everything in the family dynamic and it
changes the community and ultimately you
get these country level effects where
it’s good for everybody so on the
continent of Africa today the most
popular type of family planning of
contraceptives is an injectable shot you
get actually pretty painful you get it
once a quarter but it means you have to
walk to a health clinic it has to be in
stock at the clinic you stand in line
and then you go home so it can be you
know five six hours by the time you get
it one of the things that’s coming along
that we’ve been involved in is a very
small it’s a little tiny needle a little
tiny blister pack that a healthcare
worker with her kit in a village can
give to him and ultimately women will be
able to self inject so you can give them
a supply they take at home they squeeze
it it’s a tiny little needle they
squeeze it into the arm and they’re done
it’s it’s a you know three week three
month supply of a family planning of a
contraceptive and the whole notion of
family planning is really tied up with
education – is it not you know the more
educated some of these women are young
women are the later they made
delay having children yeah that’s hugely
correlated you know as women get
educated as income goes up this child
death rates go down all these things
both sort of cause one another and help
reinforce those things so that you get
out of this poverty trap in a country
becomes self-sufficient and if you think
about reproductive health tools if you
think about contraceptives if a woman
has access to contraceptive she can
further her education so even in the
United States what allowed women to go
into the workforce in droves
it was the birth control pill so if we
want women to be able to get not only a
high school education but a university
education have their families later we
need to give them access to these tools
it will change everything in terms of
their empowerment and their role in society we know that
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