Child health conditions improving in India but more budget needed to get rid of deaths: Bill Gates

Microsoft founder Bill Gates praised India and said that the child health in the country is improving, at the same time, emphasising that both the central and the state governments need to invest more money to get rid of the deaths and improve the nutrition.

"Well, definitely, year by year, child health in India is improving. And the Indian government and a lot of state leaders deserve credit for doing things like improving vaccination coverage," Gates said.

While speaking to reporters during a conference call on Tuesday, Gates recollected the time when he and his foundation had started their work in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, they found that the vaccine coverage was below 40 per cent. Gates said the lack of vaccine coverage was a major reason behind an indefinitely large number of deaths in the area which could have been prevented. 

Emphasising on the need of both the central and the state governments to invest more money to get rid of the deaths and improve the nutrition, Gates said, "I would say that the overall budget, the amount going from the federal and state level into health still falls short of what we think should be invested to get rid of the deaths and improve the nutrition."

"But, overall, the trends are very positive and we have great partnerships there where we're working all the time, particularly in the north, but also at the federal level to improve health and improve nutrition," he added.

Gates also said that with the rapid pace of progress in technology and infrastructure, India, now, was addressing some of the prime challenges faced by the majority of the population, like poverty, health and education. 

"India, in terms of wireless coverage, including data capability, actually India has been making huge progress as the private sector, including players like Reliance, have driven out the infrastructure," Gates said.

Gates, however, also  pointed at the fact that while a lot of good things have happened, India had been somewhat behind on malnutrition problem.

Gates while speaking to reporters also said that there were a lot of "interesting opportunities" to use the digital infrastructure to track what is going on the supply chain for primary health care centres. He said the digital infrastructure can be used to track the workers and use cell phones to make sure that they step through the processes and are fully informed. 

He said one of the big initiatives that his foundation had in India was working with the central bank to authorise digital money so that the transactional costs for even the very poor would be super low.   

"Then you have people like Nandan Nilekani doing things in education, like EkStep, where using the mobile phone to help even fairly young children, I see a lot of promise in that."

(With Inputs From PTI)