UN global summit disappoints aid groups
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《英国医生杂志》
International aid groups were disappointed by the 2005 global summit at the United Nations in New York last week. The millennium goals, set in 2000 for implementation by 2015, were probably unreachable for 20 years or more, commentators said.
"People made the right noises at last week's summit, but those noises need to be followed by real dollar commitments," said Alfred Sommer, chair of the expert committee on health of the governance initiative of the World Economic Forum, which meets in Davos, Switzerland, each year. He is former dean of the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
Professor Sommer's committee tracks the way commitments are being fulfilled on a scale of 0 to 10. For the past year, the score was 4-5, up from the 3-4 score of previous years. But, he emphasised, "Every year we don't score a 10, it means the next year we have to do that much more."
He told the BMJ that none of the millennium goals could be accomplished without building the health infrastructure in the poorest countries. That would require years of massive investments to train doctors, nurses, and technicians and to build healthcare facilities.
Even then, poor countries would have to keep training people because of the brain drain to other African countries offering better salaries and conditions, and to the United Kingdom and the United States, "which have an insatiable demand for trained health professionals." A more realistic goal, he said, would be achievement of some millennium goals by 2025.
In criticising the summit meeting, charities focused on poverty and child health. Oxfam said, "World leaders appeared nonchalant about the lack of real progress on more aid, fairer trade, and debt relief. If current trends continue, it will take 100 years instead of 10 ."
Save The Children UK was harsh about the UN's commitment to children. The commitment to free health care was "ambiguous."
The global summit at the UN, held in New York last week at the opening of the 60th session of the General Assembly, accepted 178 recommendations—a watered down roadmap of UN secretary general Kofi Annan's plan to achieve the UN's millennium goals and reorganise the UN.(Janice Hopkins Tanne)
"People made the right noises at last week's summit, but those noises need to be followed by real dollar commitments," said Alfred Sommer, chair of the expert committee on health of the governance initiative of the World Economic Forum, which meets in Davos, Switzerland, each year. He is former dean of the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
Professor Sommer's committee tracks the way commitments are being fulfilled on a scale of 0 to 10. For the past year, the score was 4-5, up from the 3-4 score of previous years. But, he emphasised, "Every year we don't score a 10, it means the next year we have to do that much more."
He told the BMJ that none of the millennium goals could be accomplished without building the health infrastructure in the poorest countries. That would require years of massive investments to train doctors, nurses, and technicians and to build healthcare facilities.
Even then, poor countries would have to keep training people because of the brain drain to other African countries offering better salaries and conditions, and to the United Kingdom and the United States, "which have an insatiable demand for trained health professionals." A more realistic goal, he said, would be achievement of some millennium goals by 2025.
In criticising the summit meeting, charities focused on poverty and child health. Oxfam said, "World leaders appeared nonchalant about the lack of real progress on more aid, fairer trade, and debt relief. If current trends continue, it will take 100 years instead of 10 ."
Save The Children UK was harsh about the UN's commitment to children. The commitment to free health care was "ambiguous."
The global summit at the UN, held in New York last week at the opening of the 60th session of the General Assembly, accepted 178 recommendations—a watered down roadmap of UN secretary general Kofi Annan's plan to achieve the UN's millennium goals and reorganise the UN.(Janice Hopkins Tanne)