Products abandoned by the West are an illusion of choice for African women and children . Bill Gates Health Empire: Part 2.

The Gates Foundation's practice of distributing dangerous drugs to the health systems of the global South is not limited to vaccines. It also helps to distribute reversible long-acting contraceptives (LARC).

Melinda Gates often refers to LARC as a way to empower women from poor countries and give them more control over their lives. However, some of these LARC have had adverse effects, and the distribution of products without informed consent does not enable women to self-determination.

One example is Norplant, a contraceptive implant manufactured by Schering (now Bayer), which can prevent pregnancy for up to five years. It was withdrawn from the U.S. market in 2002 after more than 50,000 women filed lawsuits against the company and the doctors who prescribed it. 70 of these class actions related to side effects such as depression, severe nausea, scalp hair loss, ovarian cysts, migraines and excessive bleeding.

A human development website called Degrees, funded by the Gates Foundation, claims that Norplant "has never been in great demand around the world" because its insertion and removal "have proved cumbersome."

Slightly modified and renamed Jadelle, the dangerous drug was promoted in Africa by the Gates Foundation in conjunction with USAID and EngenderHealth. EngenderHealth's initial mission, formerly called the Sterilization League to improve human health, inspired by the racist pseudoscience of eugenics, was to "improve the biological composition of humanity." Jadelle is not approved by the FDA for use in the U.S. Also there is Pfizer's Depo-Provera, an injectable contraceptive used in several countries in Africa and Asia. The Gates Foundation and USAID again collaborated to fund the distribution of the drug and to introduce it into health systems in countries such as Uganda, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Niger, Senegal, Bangladesh and India. In 2012, Melinda Gates pledged to supply contraceptives such as Depo-Provera, which cost between $120 and $300 a year to at least 120 million women by 2020. In 2017, Melinda Gates wrote an article on Medium in which she said that she and her partners were monitoring the fulfillment of that promise and they would allocate another $375 million in additional funds to do so. That meant Pfizer earned $14 billion to $36 billion through the program. Unfortunately, the active ingredient depo provero - medroxiprogestero acetate (DMPA) - has been linked to side effects such as life-threatening blood clots in the lungs, blindness and breast cancer.

A one-time version of Pfizer's drug called Sayana Press is intended for use by "local health workers." In Senegal, however, almost half of these workers were not educated above the sixth grade. Senegal's Ministry of Health was forced to change its laws so that health workers could legally distribute the medicine. According to the Institute for Demographic Research, USAID-funded NGOs "convinced the government" of the decision.

In addition, The Sayana Press training materials did not contain information about all side effects of DMPA, violating the principles of informed consent. According to WHO recommendations, DMPA should not be used for women with rheumatic diseases. But USAID-funded patient screening lists in Uganda did not require health care providers to ask women about the history of such disorders.

The recommendations for Sayana Press trainers also do not mention that the drug was strongly associated with loss of bone density and increased risk of bone fractures. As the Institute for Demographic Research said, "The Food and Drug Administration requires U.S. women to be informed, but African women are kept in the dark."

In 2015, 70 Indian feminist groups and scientists signed a statement protesting Depo-Provera's approval by regulators, citing side effects such as excessive bone density loss, weight gain, excessive bleeding and depression. Their statement stated that women's organizations were constantly opposed to the introduction of such dangerous contraceptives and that "there is a risk that women will not be provided with sufficient information to make an informed choice of contraception".

Despite widespread domestic opposition and growing evidence of negative side effects, the Gates Foundation continues to work with USAID to distribute drugs such as Depo-Provera.

Guinea pigs in the Global South

Bill Gates' influence channels have also played an important role in testing vaccines and medicines in people in poor countries.

Before the drug can be sold to the public, the FDA and similar agencies in Europe require companies to test the drug in humans. The third and final phase of these trials before the drug enters the market is phase III clinical trials, during which companies must provide the drug to a large number of people in controlled trials.

It is estimated that about 90 per cent of the cost of drug development is in Phase III trials. But these companies can avoid costs by testing in so-called developing countries.

The cost-cutting strategy was outlined by US consulting firm McKinsey, which proposed including "developing markets" in drug trials to reduce "loss of significant revenue." So it's no surprise that the Gates Foundation, a McKinsey client, said its "goal" is to help pharmaceutical companies bypass safety tests and speed up the drug approval process for pharmaceutical companies. Or, as they put it, "to refine potential interventions, such as candidate vaccines, before they get into expensive and time-consuming late-stage clinical trials." Conducting clinical trials on the poor is financially beneficial. A South African newspaper once said, "We are guinea pigs for drug manufacturers."

From 2009 to 2011, Phase III clinical trials of the first malaria vaccine funded by the Gates Foundation and produced by GSK were conducted in seven African countries (Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Burkina Faso, Gabon and Tanzania). In 2011, GSK's own data showed that girls die (for any reason) more than twice as often as in the control group. Children who received the vaccine had a 10 times higher risk of meningitis than those who did not. However, WHO continues to coordinate the drug's introduction to more than 700,000 children in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi in informal clinical trials, which it calls "pilot implementation." (It was SAGE that targeted Gates that recommended pilot implementation). Since this product is administered to children as part of the country's vaccination schedule, WHO argues that consent is implied. But parents do not always receive information about the risks, which again deprives them of the opportunity to give informed consent to their children. As the deputy editor of the British Medical Journal said, "The implied consent process means that recipients of a malaria vaccine are not informed that they are participating in the study." The Gates Foundation has also funded clinical trials of human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines conducted by GSK and Merck. These drugs were donated to 23,000 young girls in remote provinces of India as part of the Gates-backed Good Health and Technology Programme (PATH).

Again, the study participants were deprived of the opportunity to give informed consent because the "all the "for" and "against" vaccinations were "not properly communicated to parents/guardians".

According to Professor Linsey McGaey, from the University of Essex, "most vaccines were given to girls in ashrams (boarding schools for tribal children), which avoids the need to obtain parental consent for vaccinations."

PATH has also failed to implement a system of recording major adverse reactions to vaccines, which is legally required to be when large-scale clinical trials are conducted. The Indian Committee for The Health and Well-being of the Family sued PATH for the violation, accusing it of human rights violations and child abuse. In 2013, a panel of two judges noted that while foreign companies "consider India a paradise for clinical trials, this is proving hell for India." India's parliamentary committee said the "sole purpose" of the Gates-funded project was to promote "the commercial interests of HPV vaccine manufacturers, who would have made unexpected profits if PATH had successfully incorporated the HPV vaccine into the country's universal immunization programme."

The honorary editor of India's National Medical Journal agreed with the commission's report, writing that it was "an obvious case of Indians being used as guinea pigs."

Weakening public health systems

In addition to promoting dangerous products to poorer countries, the Gates Foundation is effectively preventing improvements in public health systems and access to health care. Changes in the social and economic determinants of health are giving way to more lucrative, technologically oriented solutions such as vaccines.

This phenomenon is reflected in the WHO budget. The Fund makes the greatest contribution to WHO's polio eradication programme, but the Japanese Government is the largest sponsor of the WHO Health Systems programme.

According to Global Justice Now, "the foundation's strong focus is on developing new vaccines ... distracts from other, more important health priorities, such as building sustainable health systems."

As Dr. David Legg explains, Gates "has a mechanistic view of global health in terms of finding silver bullets. Everything he supports is pretty much framed as a silver bullet... This means that the main problems identified at the World Health Assembly are not being addressed, including, in particular, the social determinants of health and the development of health systems."

In 2011, Gates spoke to WHO, saying, "All 193 member states, you must make vaccines a central element of their health systems." Anne Emanuel Byrne, a professor of public health at the University of Toronto, wrote in 2005 that the foundation had a "narrow understanding of health as a product of technical interventions that are detached from the economic, social and political context."

"The Gates Foundation has long advocated for private sector participation and global health revenue," Byrne told The Grayzone. A senior GAVI official even said that Bill Gates often told him in private conversations that he was "categorically" against " health systems" because it was a "waste of money." This phenomenon is also reflected in the way the political agenda is defined in GAVI. GAVI also focuses on vertical health interventions such as vaccines rather than horizontal approaches, such as the creation and strengthening of health systems in poor countries.

The Global Public Health report describes Gates' "approach" to health systems, which analyzes how disease-specific projects, such as vaccines, overshadow efforts to work with publicly funded health systems. The paper's author, Katerini Storeng, pointed to GAVI as an example of how "global health initiatives have begun to reflect global health discussions about strengthening health systems in favor of their disease-specific approach and ethos." According to a former GAVI employee who spoke with Storeng, even former GAVI CEO Julian Loeb-Levitt was aware of the "absurdity of vaccine campaigns, which take four weeks to plan, implement and clean up, and repeat eight times a year the complete paralysis of the health care system."

At one point, Lob-Levitt commissioned a series of GAVI assessments that identified weaknesses in health systems and the need to strengthen them. However, the attempt to do so "has met with strong resistance from many influential actors on the GAVI board," including USAID and the Gates Foundation, according to Storeng's interview. Storang writes that a GAVI employee told her that the Foundation was "a very loud, loud voice that says we do not believe in strengthening health systems."

The report also notes:

"Gates' reputation as a person who "can't listen" encouraged a non-confrontational approach on the global health issue... former GAVI employee and supporter of the NHS," told how he and his colleagues used THES posters when Bill Gates arrived at GAVI headquarters in Geneva because he is known to "hate this part of GAVI's work". The fund's preference for weak health systems and technocentric solutions to public health problems is not the only problem. The Fund also shapes policy in the critical food sector.

Earlier this year, Gates founded a new nonprofit institute in St. Louis, Missouri, in Monsanto's birthplace. The Foundation said the new organization, called Gates Ag One, would "allow sustainable seeds to increase yields" and introduce them into "crops needed by small farmers, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia." It sounds nice in words, but in reality it is the dependence of developing countries on Western industry, whether through medicines or high-tech seeds and agrochemicals. Much of this began in 2006, when the Gates Foundation, in partnership with the Rockefeller Foundation, spawned the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). Gates allocated $100 million and the Rockefeller Foundation invested $50 million. According to a report by the African Centre for Biosecurity: "It is amazing that none of those at the forefront of the revolution are African. Not unlike the colonial project in Africa, this new revolution is being created and fervently promoted by white people who claim to be free of Africans from hunger and poverty."

Through AGRA, the Foundation promotes the introduction of patented genetically modified (GM) seeds and fertilizers. These technologies undermine food security. Dr. Vandana Shiva argues that the idea that GM crops increase yields is a "scientific lie." 

And, the fund again ensures that valuable resources are diverted from systemic solutions to hunger and poverty. According to The Ecologist, Gates and Monsanto are involved in an "inappropriate and fraudulent GMO project that offers a quick technical solution instead of addressing the structural problems that create hunger, poverty and food insecurity." Moreover, the Gates Foundation actually influences African governments to change laws in accordance with its agenda... Commenting on Gates' role in changing agricultural markets, Shiva told The Grayzone: "You create a new field, you invest in it. You force governments to invest in it, you destroy regulation. You destroy alternatives, you attack scientists. And you create a whole mechanism for your monopoly."

As with Gates and Big Pharma, these steps can be explained by an apparent conflict of interest with the Gates Foundation. And, as before, the examples can go on and on. Robert Horsch, a former deputy director of the foundation's agricultural program, was previously a senior executive at Monsanto, where he worked for 25 years. Horsh led the team that manages agricultural grants, and according to the Global Policy Forum, "he was asked to join the Gates Foundation, in particular, to continue its research with Monsanto." Sam Dryden, former director of the Gates Foundation's agricultural program, previously headed two of the largest companies producing genetically modified seeds: Emergent Genetics and Agragentics Corporation. In 2005, Emergent was bought by Monsanto, where Dryen stayed for six months. When he worked for the Gates Foundation, The Guardian called him "the most influential figure in agriculture in the south of the world."

Don Dering, a former employee of gates' agricultural program, was previously a founding member of monsanto's Biotechnology Advisory Board. Dering led an agricultural development group that channeled money to "help poor farmers in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia." Then there's Florence Wambugu, author of Changing Africa, called Monsanto in Africa. After receiving a scholarship from USAID, Wambugu became a researcher at Monsanto. She was then appointed to the Board of Global Development of the Gates Foundation. Like some of his pharmaceutical endeavors, the Gates Foundation works with USAID in the agricultural sector. Pamela K. Anderson, current Director of Agricultural Development at the Gates Foundation, is currently on the board of USAID.

22,000 children die every day because of poverty. However, socio-economic causes of health problems can be neglected if the interests of corporations are decided. 

This is the case with the Gates Foundation's global health priority.

It works to ensure that countries remain dependent on large pharmaceuticals and large agriculture.

It is in this light that Gates' leadership in the global fight against Covid-19 can be understood.

A sequel to the 21st century criminal honor and scandal with the name Gates follows in the next piece of material.