Sections:

Speech

"Health is Global"

Speech by DFID Minister Gillian Merron at launch of UK Government's Global Health Strategy, Portcullis House, London

30 September 2008

Gillian Merron, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State

Thanks Edward (Stourton, presenter, BBC's Today Programme).

I’m glad to be here talking about an issue which is important to all of us – whether we work in health, development, or diplomacy.

This is about people’s lives

helping people around the world to protect themselves from disease and ill health

and protecting people in Britain too.

As Gordon Brown said in New York last week, urgent action on global health is needed.

I saw that for myself in Ghana earlier this year when I met Victoria, who has worked as a midwife for 30 years and still sees women dying in labour every week because there are only four health clinics to serve 130,000 people.

It is unacceptable that in the 21st century – when we have the means to prevent it – a woman dies in childbirth every minute. Those deaths bring tragedy to families at a time that should bring joy.

But the point I want to emphasise, particularly as people are feeling the pinch economically – and the point at the heart of this strategy – is that not only does a poverty of health as well as a poverty of wealth make no moral sense, it makes no practical sense either.

The kind of things that people in Britain worry about – the spread of disease, drugs trafficking, greater numbers of people seeking asylum, insecurity, terrorism – are all caused or made worse by suffering in developing countries.

These challenges don’t recognise international borders. They don’t stop to show a passport.

But it is by working together we can reduce the global risks that suffering and poor health create.

And the truth is, what we need to do is very simple.

Practical measures

Women are dying because they can’t afford 3 cents worth of Magnesium Sulphate to reduce high blood pressure during pregnancy; because they don’t have access to a skilled health worker during labour; because it’s a long and expensive journey to the nearest clinic, and when they get there it doesn’t have the right equipment.

In Zambia, I met a nurse who hadn’t been able to keep proper records on her patients because for two years her record cards had been sitting undelivered in a central warehouse.

What she needed was a health system that works properly – trained health workers with the right equipment, the right drugs and the right distribution networks to deliver them.

These are things which governments can do something about. Practical measures that make practical sense.

That’s the point of this strategy.

And why my department, DFID, has made 17 commitments to work with domestic and international partners to implement simple changes that will save lives.

Through the International Health Partnership donors will support developing countries to design and implement national plans to strengthen their health systems.

Development and diplomacy together

For example, in Mozambique we are working to increase the number of skilled birth attendants by two thirds, so that mothers no longer have to give birth alone and on the floor.

With Norway and the World Bank we have just launched a new taskforce on Innovative Financing for Health to help fund the training of over 1 million extra health workers, saving save 10 million lives by 2015.

And in New York last week we secured historic agreements from developing countries to increase their spending on health, and from donors to support them by providing more and better aid.

That means resources will be made available to buy drugs and equipment, and get them to where they are needed - and less women will die in childbirth.

We are making progress – I have seen it for myself in Malawi, in Mozambique, in Ghana. But we have much further to go.

In this strategy, health, development and diplomacy are coming together to put an end to the tragedies that poor health creates, and to take the simple steps that we know will save lives.

And it is in our own – in Britain’s – interest that we do so.

Links