Despite improving health and education across the world, inequality remains substantial between and within countries, according to the latest Goalkeepers report published by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on Tuesday.
Goalkeepers is an annual report card on the world's progress toward Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set by the member states of the United Nations, with a committed deadline 2030.
"If we hope to accelerate progress, we must address the inequality that separates the lucky from the unlucky," wrote Bill and Melinda Gates in the report's introduction.
Geography and gender: Principal causes of inequality
The 2019 report, entitled "Goalkeepers: Examining Inequality," pointed out that birthplace is the most decisive factor of a person's future, and that gender inequality further hinders approximately half of humanity.
For example, a child under five-year old in Chad is nearly 55 times less likely to survive childhood than one living in Finland (the population of Chad is nearly three times of that in Finland) -- a ratio so lopsided that it verges on incomprehensible, said the report.
Furthermore, inequality between districts within a single country can be enormous. The report offers India as a prime example, where only 1% of young children in Kerala state's Kollam district die, and the average person has more than 14 years of education, numbers on par with the most developed countries in the world. Yet in Budaun district of Uttar Pradesh, child mortality exceeds 8% and the average education is only six years.
On the subject of gender, the report added, "Gender inequality cuts across every single country on Earth. No matter where you are born, your life will be harder if you are born a girl."
In a telephone interview with China.org.cn earlier this month, Bill Gates said that the Gates Foundation issues a Goalkeepers report around the time of the U.N. General Assembly each year in order to remind the international community that they are making progress, but not as fast as they should be.
"No matter what the distractions in the middle-income and rich countries are, the poorest still deserve the heroic work that's gotten us this far," Gates said.
Health and education: The start to removing inequality
The Goalkeepers report stated that inequality is exceedingly complex and that there is no "silver bullet" that will remove the significance of geography, gender, and other circumstantial factors.
However, assuring that every child has access to good health and education systems is a start in the right direction, according to the report's authors.
Countries like Ethiopia, Rwanda, and Thailand serve as examples in delivering basic care to all their citizens, said the report, which explained how others can learn from those model countries' experience.
Additionally, last year's Goalkeepers report held up promising innovations being developed in Côte d'Ivoire, India, and Zambia to improve basic skills at a massive scale.
Gates said it is good news that the transfer of best practices, both within and between countries, is possible. He hailed China's efforts along these lines to reduce domestic inequality and to help other countries by sharing its experience.
"China is in many ways the best example in the world, both of raising the absolute level of health and education, and also being very serious about looking at the inequities," Gates said.
The report also highlighted China's success in effectively scaling up maternal health. It said that 30 years ago, women in rural China were more than twice as likely as women in urban areas to die in childbirth. Now, that gap has been almost completely closed. Meanwhile, the national mortality rate is less than 20 per 1000,000 live births, well below the SDG target of 70.
Li Yinuo, China director of the Gates Foundation, said , "China achieved this equitable progress by investing in maternal and child health as part of the primary care system, improving the insurance system so that more people are covered for more services, and launching a maternal and child health campaign targeted specifically at poor families in central and western areas."
Emerging technologies: Promising tools for equality
When asked about the role new technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) can play in addressing inequality, Gates told China.org.cn that AI can be applied to nearly anything, and that it is great that AI is becoming more affordable so that it will benefit more than just the wealthier countries.
Gates specified that AI is effective in medical diagnostics and that the foundation is looking at the technology for detecting cervical cancer with an image using specialized software.
AI can also be used for disease modeling and to increase understanding of the spread of disease, human behavior and the immune system, Gates added.
"In the polio eradication campaign, we use a lot of AI to decide where is the virus and where we need do a better job of getting the vaccine out to children," Gates said, adding, "We're able to input satellite photos into the system to see where people have not been vaccinated and compare that with our on-the-ground plans where the teams actually went to give out the vaccine."
