In the Annual Letter if you do a "control F" search for the term sanitation, you will see that it is only mentioned once (in passing).
Anyhow, as sanitation did not seem to be present in their latest open calls for funding, I was not sure if this was related to a scaling down of their interest (given the brief mentioning in their letter).

Dear Isis,
Thanks for pointing out the Annual Letter of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It seems well written and informative, and I can recommend to view this short video about their bet ("we think the next 15 years will see major breakthroughs for most people in poor countries"):



I couldn't actually find any specific reference to sanitation (perhaps I didn't read properly), where did you see sanitation mentioned?

But as long as they put under-5 child mortality high on their agenda, I am not worried. Sanitation is such a key for survival of babies and infants that there will no way around improving sanitation if you want to save children's lives.

Also my observation is that the Foundation's engagement in sanitation is as strong as ever and shows no signs of reducing which is great.

That recent publicity stunt of Bill Gates "drinking water from poop" also underlines their commitment for keeping this issue high on the agenda (even if we may be sceptical about certain expensive high-tech solutions, as we discussed here on the Forum (2 pages of discussions): forum.susana.org/forum/categories/53-fae...anicki-omniprocessor)

At the recent FSM3 conference (see: forum.susana.org/forum/categories/156-co...it=12&start=24#11671) there was a large contingent of project officers from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as well as a large number grantees and PhD students who where financially supported by BMGF to attend. There were many presentations about BMGF-funded topics, to the extent that one participants quietly complained to me that "BMGF is really dominating this conference, they are just everywhere, so many people are funded by them!".

Regards,
Elisabeth

P.S. Recently Christoph Platzer ended his post with "Disclaimer: I do not and did not receive any money from the Gates foundation" so perhaps I should also make a diclaimer:
I do receive money from the Gates foundation, via a grant to Stockholm Environment Institute which pays for my time as a community moderator of this discussion forum. See here for more information:
www.susana.org/en/resources/projects?search=sei

Not sure if anyone has seen this year's Gates Annual Letter (www.gatesnotes.com/2015-annual-letter?pa...-GF_EM_domain_Top_14). Anyhow, there seems only to be a brief mention to sanitation in their vision for the comming years.
What does this mean for the sector, given a lot of what is going on in some ways can be attributed to the initial efforts by the Gates Foundation?