NEW YORK, Sept. 25 (Xinhua) -- Bill and Melinda Gates co-hosted the third annual Goalkeepers event here on Wednesday, highlighting the critical importance of closing the global inequality gap to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The event also focused on health and education investment to prioritize the poorest.
Three new partnerships, called "Accelerators," were announced at the event, namely increasing access to prenatal supplements for women, expanding innovative family planning programs for young couples, and mobilizing critical global support for mental health services.
Goalkeepers is a campaign launched by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to accelerate progress toward achieving the SDGs, also known as Global Goals, a universal call to end poverty, fight inequality and injustice, and fix climate change.
The foundation launched its third annual Goalkeepers Data Report a week ago, also calling for attention to persistent global inequality.
The report said while solid progress on health and development has continued around the world, persistent gaps in opportunity mean that nearly half a billion people, or about one in every 15 people worldwide, still do not have access to basic health and education.
Gaps between countries, districts, and boys and girls prove that the world's investments in development aren't reaching everyone. Using new sub-national data, the report uncovered the vast inequalities within countries that are masked by averages.
