New Global Health Strategy Needed To Protect World's Most Vulnerable

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30th October 2009, 04:22pm - Views: 659





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MEDIA RELEASE PR36863


New Global Health Strategy Needed to Protect World's Most Vulnerable


HANOI, Oct. 30 /Medianet International-AsiaNet/ --


    Today's most vulnerable human being is a woman of child-bearing age, living  in a poor, rural community

threatened by climate change, an international conference has concluded.


    Hundreds of health, development and human rights experts and officials 

meeting in Hanoi this week called for a new global health strategy. They said 

the world's most intractable humanitarian crises - including the deaths of 

500,000 women in childbirth each year - could not be solved by looking at each 

health challenge in isolation.


    To improve the well-being of billions of the most vulnerable, every aspect of disadvantage must be

confronted, from sanitation, adequate nutrition and income to the emerging global threats of pandemics and

climate-change driven weather extremes, water shortages and diseases.


    "Every single one of these challenges is important, but if we address 

each separately we cannot achieve the elimination of maternal mortality, or 

sufficient progress in other major areas of ill health and premature death," 

said conference Co-Chair, Daniel Tarantola, Professor of Health and Human 

Rights at the University of NSW.


    The conference heard the unprecedented resources mobilised against HIV/AIDS  worldwide had made

steady, but insufficient, inroads into controlling the  epidemic, with 2.7 million new cases every year. At the

same time, low and  middle income nations are now at considerable risk from pandemics, such as H1N1  and

avian flu, because vaccines and medicines are largely stockpiled by wealthy  nations. Climate change, mass

people movements and environmental degradation  due to rapid industrialisation are compounding existing

health problems.


    "If we re-frame the global health agenda and emphasise the right to both 

health and development we have the best chance of successfully confronting 

multiple health challenges," said conference Co-Chair, Dr Cao Duc Thai, former 

Director of the Vietnamese Institute of Human Rights.


    Professor Tarantola said the resilience and creativity of local communities  - not more global health policies

and funds - was the key to new health and  development models.


    The International Conference on Realising the Rights to Health Development 

was co-organised by the University of NSW and the Central Commission on 

Popularisation and Education of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of  Vietnam. The United

Nations, Atlantic Philanthropies, USAID/PEPFAR, AusAID,  Levi Strauss Foundation and Australian

Federation of AIDS Organisations  provided additional support.



    Media contact:

    Helen Signy (Sydney) 

    Phone: +61-425-202-654 

    helensigny@writemedia.com.au 


    SOURCE: UNSW's Initiative for Health and Human Rights


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