NEW YORK, Sept 17, (AP): The billionaire Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates thinks the richest governments should increase their support for African countries that have been overshadowed by development funding increasingly going toward the humanitarian response to the war in Ukraine as well as support for refugees around the world in recent years.

"There’s less money going to Africa at a time when they need it,” whether it’s for debt relief, vaccinations or to reduce malnutrition, Gates told The Associated Press in an interview. As a portion of aid money, the funds going to Ukraine are "substantial,” he said. Gates was speaking in the context of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's annual Goalkeeper’s report published on Tuesday.

The report holds a mirror to countries’ promises to achieve development goals they set in 2015 and calculates progress for a subset of the Sustainable Development Goals that reflect the priorities of the foundation, which is one of the largest global health funders in the world. Its focus this year is on child malnutrition, which the foundation projects will be exacerbated by climate change in the coming years.

The foundation is advocating for increased used of fortified foods, high quality prenatal vitamins and increased access to safer dairy products. Progress towards reducing the number of children whose growth and potential are irrevocably harmed by malnutrition is not fast enough, nor is it happening equally around the world and within communities, said Habtamu Fekadu, managing director for nutrition for the nonprofit Save the Children.

He said prevention efforts at scale are needed, and the most cost-effective intervention is to encourage mothers to exclusively breastfeed their children in the first six months of their lives. Despite progress stalling on most of the development goals, Gates writes, "I’m an optimist. I think we can give global health a second act - even in a world where competing challenges require governments to stretch their budgets.”