Speech at Millennium Development Goals event

Madam President, ministers, excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,

Eight years ago, 189 world leaders signed the United Nations Millennium Declaration in New York. 

I was one of them.

I remember my thoughts then.

Would we ever be able to deliver on these promises?

Millennium development goal number one is to reduce extreme poverty by half.

The good news is that we are on track to reach this goal.

This will happen thanks to the remarkable economic growth of the past decade.

Other Millennium Development Goals are also within reach in many parts of the world.

The bad news is that we are lagging seriously behind in too many areas.

One of them is child mortality. The target is to reduce it by two-thirds by 2015.

At the present rate we will only manage one third.

And the difference between two thirds and one third is millions of young lives.

Every year, close to 10 million children die of diseases for which there are inexpensive and effective remedies.

Maternal mortality has barely been reduced at all.

Every year, more than half a million women die during childbirth.

That means one mother every minute.

More than fifty million women suffer serious complications related to pregnancy or childbirth.

Nearly all of these deaths and injuries are preventable. By simple means.

Renewed efforts are called for if we are to honour the pledges we made.

We know what our goals are. Moreover, we know how to reach them.

We have the knowledge and the resources to prevent most of these tragic deaths.

There is no excuse for not doing more.

Norway will continue to do its part. We have pledged two billion US dollars specifically to reduce child and maternal mortality. Through vaccines only, millions of lives could be saved.

We need more money, and we need new and better ways of spending them.

In India, a financial scheme to encourage women to give birth at clinics has led to a tenfold increase in deliveries at health facilities.

In Rwanda, the introduction of results-based financing has increased deliveries at health facilities. Child mortality has been reduced by 30%.

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Latin America as a whole has done remarkably well.

Almost all of the countries are on track to reach the millennium development goals on child and maternal mortality.

The initiative we are launching here today looks beyond the millennium development goals.

It focuses on reducing inequities in our societies.

Here in Chile, promoting greater equity in health for women is one of the government’s top priorities.

And this is paying off.

Maternal mortality, infant mortality and under-five mortality have all seen a drop of 50% or more.

I would like to congratulate President Bachelet on Chile’s progress.

I am proud to join you in these efforts.

Together with President Lula of Brazil and others, our network of global leaders is working to accelerate progress towards the health Millennium Development Goals.

Our most recent success was to get the G8 to put maternal and child health on the agenda for the first time.

This is important because we need to attract substantially larger financial commitments.

If we can raise six billion dollars yearly by 2015, we can save the lives of 3 million mothers and newborns.

Next week President Bachelet and I will co-chair a roundtable on health and education at the UN General Assembly.

This will be a key event.

In New York, we will take stock of the progress made so far.

But our task is to intensify the efforts to reach all the goals we set ourselves eight years ago. Not just in some parts of the world, but everywhere.