Speech on the International Health Partnership

5 September 2006

The Prime Minister has called on the international community to join together and help eradicate the world's major diseases.

• Gordon Brown to launch International Health Partnership

Read the full speech

Prime Minister:

I am delighted to welcome here to London today so many people participating in what I believe is the path-breaking International Health Partnership, which is being launched today. I particularly want to welcome to this stage Jens Stoltenberg, the Prime Minister of Norway; Margaret Chan from the World Health Organisation; Jean-Marie Bockel, the Development Minister in France; and Dr Tedros from Ethiopia. I also want to welcome this afternoon those who have attended our seminar, seven health ministers from around the world, all the major international agencies that are active in fighting disease for better health, and many people who have given their expertise - and, indeed, their lives - to building better healthcare systems in the world. I want to thank in advance Bill Gates, who will be sending a message of support to us by video. Everybody here knows that he has been at the heart of developing this health initiative.

Let me specifically welcome to London the Prime Minister of Norway, Jens Stoltenberg. Not only did he lead the UN review of reforming the agencies so that they could coordinate their work more effectively in social and health policy, but his initiative on child and maternal mortality, which is a world-leading attempt to improve how we deal with child and maternal mortality, will be launched in New York later this month. He is genuinely a world leader whom we all admire for the work that he does.

We have come here today because the most avoidable of tragedies should touch the deepest places of conscience, and because there is no greater cause than that every man, woman, and child should be able to benefit from the best medicine and healthcare. Our vision today is that we can triumph over the ancient scourges, and for the first time in the world in our history we can conquer polio, tuberculosis, and measles, and then with further advances and initiatives we can go on to defeat pneumonia, malaria and eventually HIV and AIDS. Donor governments, health agencies, NGOs, unions and developing countries have come together with the certainty that we now have the knowledge, the technology, the science and the medicine to do far more to save lives through our efforts. This unique and historical alliance, bringing together all the leading health agencies, is an unprecedented coalition, and it is our best chance not only to sweep aside the killer diseases that I have talked about, but to meet the Millennium Development Goals which the world set only seven years ago, and, of course, to bring an end to the suffering and poverty that is caused to so many millions of people.

While we have made advances in these last seven years - for example, 130 million children have been immunised in a movement to eliminate polio - half a million women still die in child birth unnecessarily every year - that is one every minute - and 10 million children do not reach their fifth birthday. In some of the poorest countries in the world, they are fighting diseases with only a handful of doctors and nurses. In Mozambique, represented here today, for 20 million people there are just 500 doctors and 4,000 nurses. Our aim is to reduce child mortality by two-thirds. It will not, however, be met by 2015, as we had proposed under the Millennium Development Goals. It would not even be met until 2050 unless the pace of progress improves.

Each of us here today is making a commitment by signing the health compact that we will work in concert together. We recognise that more aid is needed, so we say that we must deliver on the promises that have been made on aid at Gleneagles, but we also recognise that more aid itself is insufficient. One of the biggest challenges we face is to devise, organise and manage healthcare as a whole, not just curing individual diseases, but to build overall healthcare systems that will serve the generations. Today we agree as donors to support national healthcare plans and poor countries' health systems; we will train doctors and nurses, build clinics, and provide basic healthcare services, devising means of organising and managing healthcare as a whole. We also recognise that new financing mechanisms will be critical if we are to develop both the vaccines that are needed and ensure the long-term predictable financing to build healthcare systems. We want to build, as Bill Gates does, on the successful IFFm initiative that could vaccinate 500 million children and work with others to develop advanced commitments on malaria and tuberculosis that support research and development of new drugs.

We also know that we can do much more together by pooling our efforts and focusing our resources. Combined, we are responsible for more than half of all aid and health, so another part of this initiative is better coordination. We know poor countries find it costly and time consuming to deal with so many partners - over 40 bilateral donors, 26 agencies, 20 global regional funds, and 90 initiatives in health - so we commit today to better coordinate our efforts in support of countries national healthcare plans. Meanwhile, our partners from developing countries have committed to develop their health plans to reflect the needs of all sectors of society and to increase their public funding for healthcare. I congratulate the seven developing countries who are helping launch this initiative today. Donors will now work to back their plans. These seven countries are already making huge strides forward. We know that this is only the beginning and that many other countries will, after today, join this effort.

Today we affirm that there are great causes that move us all to action, but there is no greater cause than that every child in the world should be able to benefit from healthcare. But, a life free from the scourge of preventable disease, a gift that was perhaps unimaginable even 10 years ago, is a gift that today can be achieved and would enrich us all. I urge all countries around the world to support this new effort and that we move forward with speed to deal with the health emergency and meet our Millennium Development Goals.

Thank you.