USAID and the Gates Foundation have worked together for nearly 25 years on issues near and dear to Mr. Gates’ heart, from infectious diseases and vaccines to family planning, agriculture, and climate change.
Major collaborations include the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI).
Gates has also partnered with USAID on the Global Health Initiative and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI).
If these names ring a bill, they should:
GAVI is running an ambitious program to vaccinate 86 million adolescent girls in developing countries against HPV with jabs including Gardasil, made by Merck, which now faces a lawsuit in the US over side effects ranging from sporadic paralysis to cancer.
Gates and USAID have continued supporting GAVI despite evidence from India starting in 2009 that its HPV jabs can cause severe illness or even death.
USAID committed over $2 billion to GAVI from 2001-2017, and $1.16 billion more between 2020-2023.
Leaked docs published by Revolver News in 2022 exposed a USAID scheme using pandemic funds for "reproductive health" (i.e. population control) in Africa.
CEPI, together with Anthony Fauci's National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration, has been linked to controversial health schemes of its own, from a September 2019 workshop on vaccine biomarkers to partnership in Event 201, a pandemic simulation held in October 2019, just weeks before COVID hit.
15 November 2024, 17:58 GMT
Partners in Food (In)security
Gates and USAID have also touted collaborations on food security, promoting agricultural tech for smallholder farmers in developing countries, for example.
At the same time, the Gates Foundation has invested heavily in companies engaged in GMO research, from Monsanto and its infamous “terminator seed” projects to synthetic meat startups.
An exhaustive 2024 critique of Gates’ agricultural schemes in Africa by the US Right to Know public health watchdog found that his and USAID’s AGRA initiative, focused on chemical-laced monoculture farming, increased dependency and agrobusiness influence instead of reducing hunger.
In other words, Gates' concerns about USAID’s demise seem more about losing a key ally in efforts to control development, food security, and health in developing nations than “saving lives.”