PHA-Exch> UN poverty goals on health out of reach, WHO says

[Claudio Schuftan]

**

From: Vern Weitzel <vern at coombs.anu.edu.au>
crossposted from: "[health-vn discussion group]" health-vn at cairo.anu.edu.au

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071029/hl_nm/poverty_dc;_ylt=Aik48UHCIuHLLsrZQBw1d2AQ.3QA



By Lindsay Beck
BEIJING (Reuters) - The world is likely to fail to meet the United Nation's
Millennium Development Goals related to health, the head of the World Health
Organization said on Monday at a global forum on health research for poor
nations.

A rise in funding for research into communicable diseases has not been
matched
by the power of health systems to deliver, in part because of the failure of
governments to invest in the sector, said Margaret Chan.

"We are at the mid-point in the countdown to 2015 ... We have to face the
reality. Of all the goals, those directly related to health care are the
least
likely to be met," Chan told the opening of a conference of the Global Forum
for
Health Research.

The Millennium Development Goals are a series of social and economic targets
formulated by the United Nations that aim to halve extreme poverty by 2015.

Globally, about $125 billion a year is being spent on health research, a
four-fold increase over the past 20 years, said Stephen Matlin, the forum's
executive director.

"In spite of that increase, a relatively small fraction of the total is
devoted
to health problems of the poor and to people living in developing
countries," he
told a news conference.

Meeting the needs of populations in developing countries was also becoming
more
complicated.

In the past, health in poor countries has focused on diseases such as
malaria
and tuberculosis, but urban lifestyles, pollution and changing diets mean
that
threats such as cancer, diabetes and strokes are becoming more serious
threats.

Health research that resulted in solutions involving expensive drugs,
sophisticated technology or the need for myriad specialists would only have
limited applicability in poorer countries, he said.

"How much of the technology that's developed is useful or relevant to the
poor?"
Matlin asked.

The health minister of China, which is hosting the conference, conceded that
his
country still suffered huge gaps in its ability to provide adequate health
care
to its 1.3 billion people.

"China still suffers from wide disparities in allocation of health
resources,"
Health Minister Chen Zhu told the forum.

"Big cities in the coastal regions are only part of China. If you go to the
middle and particularly the Western parts of China, you may see different
things," he said.

Beijing has pledged to provide its population with basic medical care by
2020,
but currently the costs of seeing a doctor or staying in the hospital are
out of
reach for many in the world's fourth-largest economy.

Chan cautioned that advances in health care must keep the poor in mind.

"If we want health care to reduce poverty, we cannot allow the cost of care
to
drive impoverished households even deeper into poverty," she said.
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