Bill Gates, Dr. Atul Gawande on the biggest challenges of improving healthcare globally

Alyssa Rege -

Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates and Boston-based Brigham and Women's Hospital surgeon and The New Yorker contributor Atul Gawande, MD, have embarked on a similar mission: attempting to solve complex healthcare issues on a global scale, according to CNBC.

Among those issues are improving child mortality rates and global access to care.

While progress has been made in decreasing the rate of childhood mortality during the past few decades, Mr. Gates claims the simplest way to effectively end childhood mortality is teaching people good healthcare practices.

"Getting the personnel to do the right things [would help decrease childhood mortality]. ... We've seen in many cases, you can cut [childhood mortality rates] in half by good practices," Mr. Gates said during an interview with CNBC.

However, Mr. Gates told CNBC it can be difficult in certain areas of the world to ensure people follow these practices. According to him, economic inequality across income brackets in the U.S., as well as across middle- and low-income countries, also leads to a lower quality of life and lower life expectancy rates.

"The thing that will save our lives, that let us [live to be] 80 years on average, is having a regular source of care, across the course of your life and access to your needs and medications. And when you have major breaks, major gaps in those, that has real [costs]," said Dr. Gawande.

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