Opening Remarks

Ray Chambers: Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the Secretary-General and Peter Chernin, my partner and the Chairman of Malaria No More, welcome to United Nations and the 2008 MDG Malaria Summit.

 Thank you again for being here and thank all of you for all you’ve done in many ways to bring us to this point with malaria. Bill Gates, one of our honored guests today, has called malaria the worst on the planet. It’s easy to see why. Malaria kills more children in Africa than any other disease and it affects half the world’s population, $3.3 billion people and it costs the continent of Africa, more than $30 billion dollars a year in health costs and lost economic opportunity.

 But we’re not here just because malaria is a massive problem. Malaria is also a massive opportunity. No other issue in the world offers the chance to save lives or improve livelihoods on the same scale. We have the elements of success in the room today. One, a plan, two, major new resources, and three, leadership to get the job done.

 First the plan. We are here to debut a hard-nosed action plan called the Global Malaria Action Plan, prepared by the rollback malaria partnership that sets two ambitious shortterm goals that set the stage for eventual eradication. Goal one, in response to the Secretary-General’s call for universal coverage by 2010 of bed nets, spraying, medication. We’re now really focused on accomplishing that goal and it’s only 26 months from now. 

Goal two and most importantly, because ending deaths of children as quickly as possible is our main objective. Our goal is to reduce deaths to near zero by 2015, which would be absolutely stunning, if we could reduce deaths in Africa by 2015 to near zero. By keeping the pressure on, we can literally prevent the loss of millions of innocent children in the next seven years. Now, what this means statistically, if we accomplish our goals by 2015, all mortality of youngsters in Africa will decrease by 20-percent and it’s possible at the same time to decrease maternal mortality by 10-percent.