American billionaire Bill Gates’s foundation commits $50 million to cut stillbirths

The Gates Foundation, the philanthropy led under the direction of billionaire Bill Gates, and the U.S. nonprofit Wellcome Leap said on Monday they will commit $100 million to a new program to prevent stillbirths, starting with partners in sub-Saharan Africa, the region that carries almost half the world’s burden.

Each organization will put in $50 million over the first three years of the program, called Uzima, the Swahili word for “life and well-being.” They aim to show that stillbirth rates can be cut by half over the next decade in select countries, then use the results as a template for other health systems. Neither named a participating country. The program expects to announce its first country partner in the coming months and to identify an initial package of innovations by early 2027.

Nearly 2 million babies are stillborn each year, one every 17 seconds, the organizations said, and almost half of those losses occur in sub-Saharan Africa. A preprint from the Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance network, which the Gates Foundation funds, puts the estimated 2021 stillbirth rate at 21.1 per 1,000 total births in sub-Saharan Africa, against 17 in South Asia. The World Health Organization’s Every Newborn Action Plan set a target of 12 or fewer per 1,000 by 2030. Stillbirth prevention “remains underfunded and overlooked,” the organizations said.

Uzima will test tools across pregnancy and childbirth. They include diagnostic methods, among them fundoscopy and biomarker and imaging tests, to catch pre-eclampsia and gestational diabetes earlier; AI-enabled ultrasound for settings with few resources; sensors to detect complications during labor; AI decision-support tools for health workers; and patient navigation systems for mothers and community health workers.

“We’re working toward a future where no mother, baby, or child dies from a preventable cause,” said Anita Zaidi, president of the Gender Equality Division at the Gates Foundation. Regina Dugan, chief executive of Wellcome Leap, said: “Stillbirth is not an inevitable tragedy. We have new tools and the science needed to change outcomes.”

The program builds on Wellcome Leap’s In Utero program and on maternal and newborn health work funded by the Gates Foundation. In 2023, Makerere University Hospital in Uganda announced a multimillion-dollar contract from In Utero to develop clinical tools to reduce stillbirths in Uganda and across sub-Saharan Africa. Wellcome Leap, founded in 2020 by the Wellcome Trust, has committed more than $250 million to women’s health programs.

The two organizations are asking investors, philanthropies and governments to join, saying more partners and funding will be needed to expand approaches that work. They are also inviting health ministers to help shape the program and explore taking part. After the first three years, Uzima will work with participating countries to put the most effective approaches into wider use.

The commitment is the foundation’s, not a personal gift from Gates. The Seattle-based foundation, whose chief executive is Mark Suzman, said in May 2025 that it would spend about $200 billion over two decades and close on Dec. 31, 2045. Gates said at the time that his own fortune would fall by 99% by that date.

Against that scale, $50 million is modest. What marks Uzima out is its focus on a condition the organizations say has been overlooked, and its test of whether a 50% cut is achievable in a decade. The first country announcement will be the next marker.