At the start of a new year, I'd like to celebrate the UK’s Department for International Development’s (DFID) commitment to making low-cost and effective solutions available to women and children—be they vaccines or bed nets. We share a common goal to save tens and hundreds of thousands of lives through these miraculous, low-cost solutions.

The UK government announced the first of its two new Frameworks for Results for investing in simple tools that will prevent disease and save millions of lives. Focusing on malaria as well as maternal and newborn health, the UK will help halve malaria deaths in at least 10 hot spots in Africa and Asia and will help save the lives of at least 50,000 women and 250,000 newborns. They will enable at least 10 million couples to access family planning over the next five years.

I am excited about the UK’s focus on the fight against malaria, an area where we’ve seen incredible progress over the last few years (for examples, see the foundation’s own “progress against malaria” fact sheet). The UK has the right approach—to increase its investment in treatment and prevention, to scale up what’s working, and to invest in new research that could one day eliminate malaria completely.

The UK is also investing in women's and children’s health, which is a smart economic strategy. Healthy children are more likely to attend and finish school, which greatly increases their chances of a productive future. For a few dollars per child, we can protect children from suffering a lifetime of disease and possible death. When women are healthy enough to participate in the work force, they tend to reinvest their income in their communities and families.

The UK’s plans demonstrate what is possible when we apply existing solutions. It gives me hope in this New Year to think how many more lives will be saved when we get cost-effective solutions, including vaccines, to all women and children worldwide.