The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in an attempt to lessen the child mortality rate has announced a plan to invest $776 million over the period of next six years to advance one of the most primal and important health interventions of all, i. e. giving kids enough to eat.

Gates made the announcement in Brussels, where she earlier urged European leaders to make the nutrition of women and children a priority.

The huge pledge made by Gates Foundation also unlocks $180 million in matched funding from Britain's Department for International Development.

Melinda said, "Malnutrition is the underlying cause of nearly half of all under-5 child deaths. Yet for too long the world has underinvested in nutrition. Today we see an opportunity to change that".

Major parts of the funds announced will be spent in India, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Bangladesh and Burkina Faso, where there is serious malnutrition and a real chance to make positive changes, the foundation said.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the world's largest private philanthropy organization, with a $40 billion endowment. The foundation's major aim is to tackle disease and poverty in the developing nations.

The foundation said that it is known that every year several millions of kids die because they get substandard nutrition during the critical 1,000-day period from their mother becoming pregnant until their second birthday.

Melinda said many European donors are now also trying to prioritize nutrition, which they believe will be one of the fundamental solutions to help reduce child mortality by half by 2030.

The extra funding being announced in Brussels will aim to help women and girls before they get pregnant, improving the likelihood of a healthy mother and child.