SECRETARY-GENERAL WELCOMES 'ROLL BACK MALARIA' AS INTER-AGENCY EFFORT TO MOBILIZE UN SYSTEM TO ADVANCE HUMAN PROGRESS, DEVELOPMENT
Press Release
SG/SM/6779
SAG/16
SECRETARY-GENERAL WELCOMES 'ROLL BACK MALARIA' AS INTER-AGENCY EFFORT TO MOBILIZE UN SYSTEM TO ADVANCE HUMAN PROGRESS, DEVELOPMENT
19981030 Kofi Annan Stresses Need to Beat Malaria, Which Has Caused So Much Suffering for All Too LongFollowing is the text of the Secretary-General Kofi Annan's message welcoming the launching of the "Roll Back Malaria" initiative, in New York today:
Malaria kills 3,000 children every day. It afflicts between 300 and 500 million people every year. And year after year, malaria has defied our efforts to control it, to eradicate, to beat it. Yet beat it we must for its sway is a devastating factor in the development of many of the poorest parts of the world. Nowhere is this truer than in Africa, where more than three-quarters of all malaria cases occur -- the vast majority of them in children.
I therefore warmly welcome the Roll Back Malaria initiative -- because it enables us to focus our efforts on an issue which has caused so much suffering in Africa and other developing regions for all too long; and because it brings together four key entities of the United Nations system in a closer and more permanent form of partnership than we have seen before to alleviate suffering and remove a crucial obstacle to development.
While the World Health Organization (WHO), with its mandate and expertise, is the natural lead agency in the effort to Roll Back Malaria, each of the other three organizations that has joined the initiative has a unique and important role to play.
As an integral part of this process, the World Bank has committed itself, among other activities, to increasing Bank investments in malaria control and research; facilitating resource mobilization in support of the initiative; and working for a more effective involvement by national finance, economics and other Departments to become full partners in reducing malaria as a factor that stunts economic development.
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The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) will work to strengthen capacities for integrating malaria-related action into national poverty eradication policies, strategies and programmes; it will strive to enhance collaboration among Governments, the private sector, civil society and local communities to ensure that people have access to basic social services and productive assets.
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) will work with governments and non-governmental organization (NGO) partners to give special attention to reducing the terrible toll of malaria on young children and pregnant women, and to improve health and nutrition. It will focus on making insecticide- treated mosquito nets available to all families that need them, and on ensuring that every child with malaria has access to early and effective treatment. And it will seek to mobilize community, district and national leaders to make effective malaria control a priority.
The initiative has been conceived in such a way that cooperation among United Nations organizations is only the hub of a wider collaborative effort, involving private sector companies, NGOs, other multilateral organizations and, above all, the countries affected. For it is, above all, the countries and communities themselves that will need to mobilize in order to Roll Back Malaria.
The presence at the briefing of the heads of all of the four organizations involved - Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, Mr. Jim Wolfensohn, Ms. Carol Bellamy and Mr. James Gustave Speth, -- testifies to their personal commitment. The fact that it takes place just prior to the session of the Administrative Committee on Coordination (ACC) -- where I will have the pleasure of welcoming Dr. Brundtland to her first meeting of the Committee - augurs well for the success of the session. It is, indeed, a highly relevant prelude to a meeting where I will be discussing with the heads of all United Nations agencies and organizations ways in which the system can join hands to address the economic, but also the human impact of globalization, and to promote a sustained follow-up to my report on "The Causes of Conflict and the promotion of Durable Peace and Sustainable Development in Africa".
Roll Back Malaria will be a source of inspiration to us all. For it is with inter-agency initiatives such as this one that we can best hope to meet the goal of reforming and strengthening the United Nations system, and of ensuring that the capacities of the system are mobilized to advance human progress and development.
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