The Carter Center.
Atlanta, Georgia
May 8-9, 2008. (IPS)

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon met with former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and about 40 global health leaders at the Carter Center to focus world attention on maternal health care.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and global health leaders meeting at the Carter Center in the United States city of Atlanta agreed on measures to help make childbirth safer and tackle other challenges facing the world's poorest and most vulnerable people.

Dr. Chan said women's health is critical. "The world in the last 20 years failed to take care of its women"

President Carter said this was "one of the most important meetings" that he would attend this year. He stressed that to address global health problems, "it is not only a matter of health care but of economic progress for the poorest people on earth."

At the Carter Center, health leaders discussed the United Nations Millennium Development Goals - eight goals to be reached worldwide by 2015 that include:

• reducing child and maternal mortality;
• eradicating extreme poverty and hunger;
• universal primary education;
• combating AIDS, malaria and other diseases.

Some of the basic goals may not be reached, especially as world food prices continue to soar - UN Secretary General said.

As for the other millennium goals, "We're not even half-way on maternal mortality," "It's the slowest moving goal." The biggest area for concern is sub-Saharan Africa, "No countries there are on board," he said.

The Millennium Goals are a blue print for development endorsed by 189 countries in 2000.

As Dr. Roses, Director of PAHO expressed, main messages from the meeting were focuses on:

Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as a the best framework around which we can all rally to improve global health.

We are making progress in the improvement of universal access and social protection and this is creating the capacity for responding to multiple health challenges current and future,- she added.

We have to combine the focused and results driven energy of vertical programs with the continuous multiresponse primary health care based health systems in order to provide sustainable protection for all people especially the most marginalized.

More information:

UN News Centre online. Ban Ki-moon gathers global health experts to improve care for world’s poorest.

Strengthening Health Systems: Towards New Forms of Global Cooperation. Dr. Julio Frenk's keynote address.

The Kampala Declaration and Agenda for Global Action.

For more information, please contact Diaz, Eng. Katia (WDC), Director's Office Web Master.