[afro-nets] Integrated, long-term approach needed in Global struggle against disease - Annan

["Claudio Schuftan" <claudio@hcmc.netnam.vn>]

Integrated, long-term approach needed in Global struggle against disease - Annan
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Source: UNNews@un.org
New York, May 9 2006 8:00PM

Given the global threat posed by HIV/AIDS, malaria and emergent 
epidemics such as avian flu, holistic health systems must be built 
around the world, especially in developing countries, United
Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said today.

“We must move away from the kind of health interventions that I would 
liken to peacekeeping without peace building: humane and essential, but 
all too often lacking the necessary longer-term effort to consolidate 
results and make them sustainable” he said in prepared remarks to the 
Fellows of the New York Academy of Medicine, a non-profit organization 
founded in 1847 that is dedicated to enhancing the public health.

An integrated, long-term approach will require the recognition that 
health issues are security issues and that much greater resources must 
be devoted to disease surveillance and response, he said.

In addition, he said it must be understood that public health hinges as 
much on the empowerment of women, human rights, education and other 
social factors as it does on medical technologies.

Finally, he called “critically important” efforts to build health 
systems that afford universal access in developing countries including 
by addressing the acute shortage of health workers there.

Africa alone, he said, will require one million new such workers to 
achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the targets drawn up 
at the 2000 World Summit to reduce socio-economic ills by the year 2015.

“We need to build on the wealth of talent that exists in developing 
countries so as to construct a workforce capable of taking on people’s 
everyday needs, as well as the big killers of our age” he said.

To accomplish that, he called on participants to support a 
transformation of medical training in developing countries and to 
promote increased assistance from developed countries for the full 
range of UN health programmes.

--
Claudio Schuftan
mailto:claudio@hcmc.netnam.vn