Co-Chairman, Gates Foundation
Melinda French Gates speaks with Dr. Ashton on the future of women’s health
Gates discussed tools like the single dose HPV vaccine and AI-assisted ultrasounds, which could potentially save as many as 4 million lives each year.
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About Melinda Gates
Melinda French Gates announced a $215 million increase in her women’s health funding, bringing her total commitment to $600 million, with a focus on reproductive health, menopause, and mental health. She stated that women’s health has been “ignored and underfunded for far too long” and expressed concern about the rollback of reproductive rights in the United States, saying she never thought the country would “roll back a law that was on the books for US women.” She also said she has not directly spoken with HHS Secretary RFK Jr. about vaccine misinformation, but that the foundation has “engaged in that discussion and it has not gone well.” French Gates became a minority owner of One Roof Sports & Entertainment, the parent organization of the Seattle Kraken, and discussed the role of sports in community building and youth development. She said she has voted for candidates from both major parties and described herself as a centrist. She also spoke about her philanthropic approach, stating that 70% of Pivotal Ventures’ funding is focused on women’s power in the United States, and argued that “having the richest country in the world...but not having women all the way to the places they ought to be able to go in society does not make any sense.”
Transcript (9 segments)
✨ AI-enhanced transcript with speaker attribution
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Robin Roberts0:00
The first question that I want to ask you, Melinda, is obviously you're known around the world for being a philanthropist, but I'm sure if I asked you how you see yourself first and foremost, it's as a mother. I'm just curious how the work that the Gates Foundation and you've been doing, how has it kind of infiltrated your family life?
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Melinda Gates0:22
Oh, thank you for asking. Yes, being a mother is just one of the greatest gifts in life. I was lucky enough to be in the room when my daughter was in labor with her baby, and I could sit there because there's a lot of time, right, and think about all the places I've been in the developing world where I've been in the delivery room and think, oh my gosh, if my daughter didn't have somebody here taking her blood pressure, or I know what hemorrhage looks like, I know what the pain of childbirth is like in these settings. And so to see that my daughter was getting good care, and still you're concerned at the time of the birth of the baby, it's a bit scary until that baby comes healthy. I could think about all those things, and I think now having two healthy daughters and a healthy granddaughter, it makes me all the more passionate about let's make sure no mom dies in childbirth. That just shouldn't happen in this day and age.
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Robin Roberts1:19
And I want to ask you about the five tools that the Gates Foundation has identified in really promoting and saving potentially more than 4 million lives. One of them, AI-assisted ultrasound sonogram, is a very easy basic tool that we use all the time in women's health. How are you hoping that's going to help?
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Melinda Gates1:42
Well, if you think today about if you're a mom, let's say in the United States, when you go in you get an ultrasound, it's a quite a large machine, you go into a special room to have it done. We were able with our partners to come up with a very small AI-assisted ultrasound that literally can plug into your phone or plug into a tablet. A community health worker goes out to these women, and so if she can have an AI-enabled ultrasound and literally with a few scans of that mom's belly, be able to see: is the child growing properly? Is the mom's health okay in terms of what you can see in the ultrasound? It's a game changer.
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Robin Roberts2:20
What about the one-dose HPV vaccine? This is something that was FDA approved, not in the one-dose regimen, but here in the United States in 2006. It's been called by many oncologists the single greatest advance in the world of cancer in a century. What do you hope that that can accomplish?
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Melinda Gates2:42
Well, as you said, we've had this vaccine since 2006, and I've been lucky enough to travel to the continent of Africa many, many, many times, and I can tell you since about 2008, women on the continent have been asking us for it. And the issue has been it's an expensive vaccine, as you said, it's two doses, and so the price needed to both come down and the formulation we needed to prove that it could be done in one dose, because then again, girls in a low-income setting don't even have to come into a community clinic for it. We can give it out in schools, we can give it out in places where they gather. So often a young girl never even makes it into the clinic. She may not ever make it into the clinic at all until after she's had a child, or she might make it in at the time of birth, and that's too late. Absolutely.
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Robin Roberts3:33
My last question, because I know you're so busy and I could talk to you forever, and this is going to be the hardest one. If you could instantaneously change one thing on your mission of the Gates Foundation for women's health, what would it be?
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Melinda Gates3:49
It would be that every single girl and woman on this planet who wants to have access to a contraceptive has access. There are 200 million women asking us for them, and we know that when women can time and space the births of their children, the women are healthier, the children are healthier, the family is wealthier. And so I would make sure every single woman had access to contraceptives so she could decide when and whether to have a child.
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Robin Roberts4:24
Well, hey there, GMA fans. Robin Roberts here. Thanks for checking out our YouTube channel. Lots of great stuff here, so go on, click the Subscribe button right over here to get more awesome videos and content from GMA every day, anytime. We thank you for watching, and we'll see you in the morning on GMA.