11th July, 2008
Yesterday, Gordon Brown made a speech on this year's G8 Summit in the House of Commons. This is what he said about the commitments made towards health:
"As part of action this year on the millennium development goals, the G8 also signed up to new action to meet goals on health, and also reaffirmed commitments made at Gleneagles to provide $25 billion in aid to Africa, and $50 billion globally by 2010, as well as establishing universal access to treatment for AIDS. How the world achieves further major advances in the alleviation of poverty, disease and illiteracy is the subject of the UN millennium summit convened by the UN Secretary-General for 25 September. I call on all countries to do what is necessary to meet the promises that they made on the millennium development goals.
My aim at the summit was to turn generalised commitments that were not time- specific into concrete action and into delivery to address poverty, disease and illiteracy. We agreed that over the next five years we would deliver the commitment of $60 billion to tackle infectious diseases and strengthen health in Africa and developing countries. Some other countries will provide additional resources for health care systems, including our own.
We also agreed to help to fund in 36 African countries a target of 2.3 health workers per 1,000 people. That would mean in total an additional 1.5 million new doctors, nurses or health workers, including a major advance in the number of skilled midwives so that women no longer have to die when unaided during childbirth. The G8 also committed to finance 100 million bed nets by 2010 for the prevention of malaria—this could save 600,000 lives—while $1 billion of new funding for the education fast-track initiative will immediately help a further 10 million children to go to school."