Covid-19 has set global health progress back 25 years, says Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

The knock-on effects of the coronavirus pandemic have halted and reversed global health progress, setting it back 25 years and exposing millions to the risk of deadly disease and poverty, a report by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation warned on Tuesday (Sept 15). Because of Covid-19, extreme poverty has increased by 7 per cent, and routine vaccine coverage - a good proxy measure for how health systems are functioning - is dropping to levels last seen in the 1990s, the report said. 'It's a huge setback,' Mr Bill Gates, co-chairman of the foundation and a leading philanthropic funder of global health and development, told a media briefing on the report's findings.