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Global health experts to help improve care for the
poorest
United Nations—UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and
global health leaders meeting in Atlanta agreed on measures to help
make childbirth safer and tackle other challenges facing the world’s
poorest and most vulnerable people. “We are here not only because
global health is an enormous challenge, but also because we can do
something about it,” Ban said at a press conference over the weekend
following his meeting with leading global health experts from civil
society, academia, philanthropy and the private sector gathered at
the Carter Center, with its founder, former US President Jimmy
Carter, in attendance.
The meeting attracted the participation of Margaret Chan, the
Director-General of the World Health Organization, and previous WHO
chief Gro Brundtland, the former Prime Minister of Norway and a
member of the Elders, a group of world leaders whose goal is to
contribute their wisdom, independent leadership and integrity in
tackling some of the world’s toughest problems. The
Secretary-General said participants had a productive session. “We
have achieved consensus on the urgency of strengthening health
systems to serve all, especially the poorest and most vulnerable,”
he said.
Maternal health was a key focus of the discussions. “We have
outlined concrete options to make the process of giving birth safer
for mothers, and debated concrete means to improve women’s health,”
the Secretary-General announced. A mother dies every minute from
complications of pregnancy and childbirth, the UN says. Maternal
health is the slowest moving target of the Millennium Development
Goals the goals that all countries have agreed to reach by 2015 to
lift people out of poverty.
“It is unacceptable that over half a million mothers die every
year,” declared Ban. “We must put a stop to these senseless deaths.”
Dr. Chan said women’s health is critical. “The world in the last 20
years failed to take care of its women,” she said. The maternal
mortality rate had not budged in those two decades. She decried the
fact that half a billion women die in childbirth each year and
another half a billion suffer from neglected tropical diseases.
Dr. Brundtland agreed that “on the side of mothers, the world is
really far away from any improvements and we need to now focus again
so that we don’t have a woman dying every minute because of
childbirth.” She said the international community knows what works.
“The resources are not outrageous $10 billion is nothing in our
world today to really make a serious impact on these kinds of
issues,” she said.
The Secretary-General said participants also targeted neglected
diseases like guinea worm and river blindness that “can be
eliminated if we only take the time to do so.” —AFP
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