Anti-poverty summit raises 16 billion dollars: UN chief
UNITED NATIONS (AFP) — A UN summit called to rev up the war on global poverty raised a total of roughly 16 billion dollars, UN chief Ban Ki-moon said here.
"We have full commitment from many countries in pledges to help the world's poor, around the 16 billion dollars mark," he told reporters Thursday at the close of the day-long summit called to review implementation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
He said the exact total from pledges from world leaders, the private sector and civil society still had be tallied, but noted that "that expression of global commitment would be all the more remarkable because it comes against a backdrop of financil crisis."
Major commitments were announced Thursday in four key areas: malaria control, education, health and food security.
On the
malaria front, participants committed around three billions dollars for a program to save more than 4.2 million lives between 2008 and 2015.
The malaria funding includes 1.1 billion dollars from the World Bank and 1.62 billion over two years from the Global Fund to Fights AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria -- an international partnership of government, private sector and non-governmental organizations.
Billionaire and Microsoft founder Bill Gates said his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was also providing 168.7 million dollars to fund a Malaria Vaccine Initiative for research on a new generation of malaria vaccines.
On
education, Ban said 4.5 billion dollars' worth of new pledges and commitments were made to get 24 million children into school by 2010, as a milestone toward universal primary education by 2015.
In the
health sector, commitments totaling nearly two billion dollars next year and rising to seven billion by 2015 were made for the MDGs relating to child mortality and maternal health.
Ban said a Global Campaign for Health also aimed to mobilize an extra 30 billion dollars by 2015, including to train over one million health workers, saving 10 million lives by 2015.
The UN chief said 1.6 billion dollars was also pledged to boost
food security, including a new initiative to help poor farmers in sub-Saharan Africa and central Ameria gain access to rich markets.
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