My blog from the UN Summit on the Millenium Development Goals
My name is Hattie Begg and I am the Research and Advocacy Officer at AMREF UK. I recently attended the UN Summit on the Millenium Development Goals in New York. This is my diary from the weekend.
Day one – Sunday 19th September
Morning
First event in the illustrious MDG Summit calendar was the health-focused ‘Women Deliver’ brunch at New York’s smart Waldorf Hotel. There was an impressive line up of speakers, including the Managing Director of the World Bank (Ngozi Okongo-Iweala), Michel Sidibe (ex-Director of UNAIDS), and Mrs Graxa Machel, an inspiring advocate for women. All speakers reiterated the same urgent call: women and girls can no longer wait, and women and girls can no longer die.
There were some other common themes throughout the event – not only in the formal addresses, but also in the welcomed ‘brainstorming sessions’ held on each table between speakers. These included familiar but important buzzwords: ‘technology and innovation’, ‘integration’, ‘country ownership’ and ‘partnership’ for sustainable and effective change.
But where were the health workers in these discussions? Where were the urgent cries for the large-scale training and support of the skilled professionals and other health cadres who can actually save these women’s lives? It seemed to me, that in this event, health workers were the forgotten factor.
Afternoon
After a short lunch meeting at AMREF, I joined my AMREF, Merlin and Health Workforce Advocacy Initiative colleagues at the Global Health Council event: “Looking back and looking ahead: What will it take to reach the health MDGs?” The event was held in the Princeton club, and involved a detailed panel discussion facilitated by AMREF USA’s new Chair Elect Carol Jenkins, between Dr. Mubashar Sheikh (Executive Director of the Global Health Workforce Alliance), Dr. Seth Berkley (President of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative), Dr. Christopher Elias (President and CEO of PATH), and Dr Simonds (Vice President of the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation).
It was inspiring (and relieving) that this time, health workers were a focal issue in the discussions. Dr. Mubashar told us that the MDGs cannot be met in the absence of focused action on improving access to skilled, motivated and supported health care workers. He said that there is a clear link between the availability of health workers and health outcomes, and a near total overlap between the countries facing a health workforce shortage and the ones that account for the bulk of maternal and child deaths. And he gave us a shocking statistic…. “Washington DC has a population of fewer than 600,000 people, but has about twice as many physicians as the 80 million residents of Ethiopia”.
So what needs to happen? We learned that health workers must be at the centre of all efforts. We need high level political will and multi-sectoral action. We need to scale up an additional 3.5 million health workers, and we need an additional $40 billion of investment - aligned to country needs and national plans. All this needs to happen if we have a hope of meeting the health MDGs by 2015.
What else was discussed? Again, ‘innovation’ was a key theme – but not only technical innovation, but also operational and policy-oriented innovation (such as task-shifting). ‘Partnership’ also came up a great deal, as did the need to scale-up, beyond small and sporadically located demonstration projects. It also became clear that controversial issues such as ‘integration’ continue to cause divisions, as worryingly, did the role of civil society. Clearly, as civil society, we must continue to stress the important role we can play in testing new ideas, and reaching the most marginalised of communities. Lastly, research – the urgent need to build capacity and build the evidence base in these areas, must be an urgent priority.
So – all in all – an interesting discussion, with some useful points made. But perhaps most importantly to AMREF – health workers were a focus, and as Carol Jenkins reminded us at the end of the event – we must ensure that health workers are at the heart of all our efforts to address the health MDGs.
Day two – Monday 20th September
What an exhausting day! The ‘Health Worker’ team spent the entire day cooped up in the AMREF US office, in central New York planning our event. You can read about that here