mission Steve Fouch identifies practical responses to global poverty
Poverty+health I
History’. 1 we are
exhorted to speak up for the poor, and
encourage those in
power to act justly on their behalf
t would be hard to miss the headlines of the first few weeks of 2005. Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and the Vicar of Dibley, all promising that this year was the year to ‘Make Poverty Why 2005 in particular? One reason is the
pivotal role the UK will be playing in world affairs as it both chairs the G8 (the club of the world’s seven biggest economies, plus Russia), and holds (from June) the Presidency of the European Union. It is also the year that Blair’s Commission for Africa reports back with strategic recommendations to help that troubled continent. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have both made very
public their belief that decisive action needs to be taken to tackle global poverty and global warming. Although the UK government’s track record on the latter has been widely criticised, 2
there is no doubt
that they are trumping up the money on the aid and development side of things – significantly expanding the budget of the Department for International Development (DfID), and committing to debt relief. But the UK’s position of influence this year gives the government a chance to put pressure on the other powerful nations to increase their commitment to fighting poverty as well.3 The other reason is that 2005 is a third of the way towards the deadline for the achievement of the United Nations eight millennium development goals (MDGs). Endorsed by 189 nations in September 2000, the headline MDG is to halve the number of people living in absolute poverty (currently defined as living on an income of less that US $1 per day) by
12 TRIPLE HELIX SPRING 05 2015. The other seven goals4 include four specific
targets related to health: Reduce by two thirds the mortality rate among children under five
Reduce by three quarters the maternal mortality ratio
Halt and begin to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS Halt and begin to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major infectious diseases
To put this into context, 1.2 billion people barely
survive in absolute poverty (half of Africa alone lives in absolute poverty), 800 million are undernourished, AIDS claimed 3 million lives last year, while malaria claims 150,000 lives each month in Africa alone. 1,200 children under five die every hour from treatable or immunisable diseases. One woman a minute dies in childbirth, 95% in developing nations (an African woman has a 1 in 6 chance of dying in childbirth). So what progress had been made on the MDGs by
the start of 2005? According to a recent World Bank Report,5
most nations are making progress, but not in
Sub-Saharan Africa, which is actually slipping backwards in all these areas. Why is Africa in such a state? The reasons are numerous – internecine conflicts abound (the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo alone has caused four million deaths, more than in any other conflict since World War II). AIDS is pandemic – reaching incidences of nearly 40% of the adult population in some Southern African nations – devastating the economically productive population. Corrupt governments filter what wealth is generated
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