Launch of The World Health Report 2003
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Thank you for coming to the launch of the first World Health Report since I became Director-General. We have used the image of two baby girls to illustrate its main message: extraordinary success and devastating failure. The child born in Japan today can expect to live until the age of about eighty-five. Her life expectancy shows that modern health care services are still making unprecedented progress. Meanwhile, the child born in Sierra Leone today can expect to live only until she is about thirty-six years of age. What little progress there was has been reversed by current epidemiological and economic trends. This image also helps to convey some idea of what can be done and what must be done.
The Report examines the latest facts and figures on some of the most important current health challenges, and what they mean for our work. The unifying concern in each area covered is WHO's reason for existence: to promote justice and security by making available to everyone the best health possible. Health is arguably the most fundamental human need and right in every society. Our conclusion is that the only way to meet this need and uphold this right is to build strong national health systems.
We have emphasized the Millennium Development targets for health because they give health workers of the world a strong mandate and assurance of support from the international community. These targets concern nutrition, infant and maternal mortality, infectious disease control, safe environments and affordable medicines.
They are achievable but only if a much more urgent effort is made, by all concerned, than we have seen so far. For example, at the present rate of progress, it will take not fifteen years as planned but one hundred and fifty years to reduce child mortality in Africa by two-thirds.
The biggest single cause of death in adults between the ages of 15 and 59 is HIV/AIDS. 2.3 million men and women died of this disease in 2002, depriving societies of their most able members, and children of their parents. The campaign to get 3 million people in developing countries onto antiretroviral treatment by the end of 2005 gives us a two-year deadline. It is aimed at radically changing this situation.
That is only one part of our work, though it is helping to catalyse a quick response to needs in many other areas as well. It is closely linked to tuberculosis and malaria control, and builds on experience gained in the polio eradication campaign.
There are now only six polio-endemic countries left and we are making the final push in this campaign. I know, from my experience with polio eradication in the Western Pacific Region, that this part is very demanding.
Stopping SARS was not only a major achievement of the past year but produced extremely valuable information and insights on how to work. By triggering worldwide mobilization, we were able to break the transmission of a potentially devastating new disease in the space of one hundred and twenty days. The findings are documented here so that they can be used to prevent and control future outbreaks of new diseases.
Meanwhile, five of the top ten health risks worldwide are high blood pressure, tobacco, alcohol, cholesterol and obesity. Cardiovascular diseases are among the leading causes of death even in low-income developing countries.
Smoking is responsible for about five million deaths a year. In May of this year, the World Health Assembly adopted the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Once ratified by forty countries, this will come into force. It will greatly enhance the power of countries to use legal methods to prevent this completely unnecessary cause of suffering and death. So far eighty Member States have signed the Convention and five have ratified it. We need thirty-five more ratifications and must keep helping countries to speed up the process however we can.
These are just some highlights of the report. They characterize the current situation. There are very urgent needs but it is also true that more is possible now for the world's health than ever before. We must do everything we can to seize this opportunity.