US gov't clarifies pledge to fight diseases in Africa (Page 14)

THE $63 billion pledge made before Ghana’s Parliament by US President Barack Obama on July 11 to help fight diseases in Africa and elsewhere is for a period of six years.
The US government is yet to come out with the number of countries to benefit and how much each country would receive from the funding under its Global Health Initiative which is between 2009 and 2014.
A White House statement made available to the Daily Graphic by the US Information and Resource Centre (IRC) in Accra indicated that the US, in its budget read earlier, invested “$63 billion cumulatively over six years for global health programmes”.
In a “Statement by the President on Global Health Initiative”, and issued by the Office of the Press Secretary at the White House on May 5, 2009, President Obama was reported to have expressed the hope that best practices would drive the funding for these programmes.
“But I also recognise that we will not be successful in our efforts to end deaths from AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis unless we do more to improve health systems around the world, focus our efforts on child and maternal health and ensure that best practices drive the funding for these programmes,” he pointed out.
In the course of his address during his visit to Ghana, President Obama gave the assurance that the US would pursue the goal of ending deaths from malaria and tuberculosis and also eradicate polio on the “African continent and elsewhere”.
“America will support these efforts through a global health strategy because in the 21st century we are called to act by our conscience but also by our common interest because when a child dies of a preventable disease in Accra that diminishes us everywhere,” he said.
In the statement from the White House, the US President pointed out that the comprehensive global health approach could yield significant returns by investing in efforts to prevent millions of new HIV infections, reduce mortality of mothers and children under five, saving millions of lives, avert millions of unintended pregnancies and eliminate some neglected tropical diseases.
The statement pointed out that the desire of the US government to help the rest of the world to fight diseases stemmed from the fact that “in the 21st century disease flows freely across borders and oceans and, in recent days, the 2009 H1N1 virus has reminded us of the urgent need for action”.
It pointed out that that US had to help others, since it could not wall itself off from the world and hope for the best nor ignore the public health challenges beyond its borders.
“An outbreak in Indonesia can reach Indiana within days and public health crises abroad can cause widespread suffering, conflict and economic contraction. We cannot simply confront individual preventable illnesses in isolation. The world is interconnected and that demands an integrated approach to global health,” it pointed out.