UN Chief Calls On Nations to Prioritize Women's Health

Either governments have to kick-start efforts to improve women's health or risk missing a UN-set deadline to cut maternal deaths, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has cautioned nations. Speaking at Women Deliver, the largest international women's health conference in a decade, Ban said Monday that women's and children's health issues have been the slowest of the UN Millennium Development Goals to make progress. He unveiled an action plan that would see the UN work with global governments to speed up work on women's health targets and get them back on track. "Our joint action plan demands that all women and children should benefit from the relatively simple, proven health practices and known technologies that save lives," Ban said. Among the UN targets -- set in 2000 by 189 countries -- is a commitment to efforts to reduce by 75 percent the number of women who die in childbirth. There are only five years left until the 2015 deadline to achieve the goals. Reports published last month by The Lancet, a British medical journal, say that with just five years to go to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, only around two dozen countries are on track to cut maternal deaths by 75 percent. "Women are dying because their lives are not important enough to policymakers around the world," said Guttmacher Institute president and CEO Sharon Camp. She noted that while less than 12 billion dollars were spent last year to promote maternal health -- a sum she said should be at least doubled -- "Wall Street bosses paid themselves twice that in bonuses last year."