Melinda Gates said she is “deeply troubled” by Donald Trump’s decision to cut funding for family planning, a move that threatens to reverse progress made on expanding services to women in some of the poorest parts of the world.

At the opening plenary of the global family planning summit in London on Tuesday, Gates said: “This is a difficult political climate for family planning. I’m deeply troubled, as I’m sure you are, by the Trump administration’s proposed budget slash.

“If empowering women is more than just rhetoric for the president, he will prove it by funding family planning.” Earlier in the day she said she hoped the US Congress would step up to block Trump’s proposed cuts. The US is the largest donor for family planning, giving more than $600m this year alone.But in May, Trump decided not to allocate any funding for international family planning in his proposed budget. The move followed a decision in April to defund the UN Population Fund. The UNFPA is already facing a funding hole of $700m (£543m) until 2020. At the time of the budget, Gates tweeted that the move “would come at a tremendous cost to families around the world”.(theguardian)…[+]