Check against delivery

Your Majesty, Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Six years ago here in New York, I participated in the adoption of the Millenium Development Goals as Prime Minister of Norway.

We knew then, as we know now, about the many fine and solemn declarations adopted by world leaders.
Many of those have raised hope for a better tomorrow.
But many remain unfulfilled.

I felt then as I do now that we could not leave those goals and return to business as usual.
We cannot hope that somebody else would do the job.

I decided then to devout much of my time and strength to make sure that the world achieves at least one of the Millennium Goals. The goals are all important. And Norway pursues each and every one with determination.

But I focussed extra on No 4 - the one which compels us to reduce child mortality by two-thirds by 2015

As a father I was sensitized to the injustice that all Norwegian infants are immunized, but very few children are in parts of Asia and Africa.

As an economist, I could appreciate that vaccine programmes are key to economic growth in poor countries.

As a politician I have the privilege to do something about it.

This is why I am grateful to all of you for gathering here today to take part in this global campaign to save millions of children.

That is why I am so very grateful for all the hard work that has gone into preparing for this Symposium especially by UNICEF and The Lancet. Thank you so much Ann Veneman and Richard Horton. Without you – No Symposium.

That is why, Your Majesty, Excellencies, that your presence is so important. I am deeply grateful that you agreed to take part in this endeavour.

More than 10 million children die every year from diseases that are largely preventable and treatable. More than 99 per cent of these deaths ravage the world’s poorest families.

The tragedy is compounded by the fact that two thirds of these deaths could be avoided. We have the means, and we know what works

So, you may ask me - what is the Norwegian government doing to reduce child mortality.

First of all, we are a long-term staunch supporter of UNICEF.

In fact we are the second largest contributor to UNICEF.

And we are close to giving 0.96 per cent of our income to development aid.

And we will reach the 1 per cent target within few years.

We work on the whole spectrum of basic health care, education, maternal health.

Moreover, since 2001 we are one of the largest contributors to the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, GAVI.

GAVI has demonstrated high yields from its result based approach. This is documentet in the lancet today.

GAVI’s efforts have saved the lives of 1.7 million children

This shows the power of mobilizing together. That is why we are here today.

Norway contributed 30 million US dollars to the vaccine Alliance each year from the beginning in 2001.

This was increased to 75 million in 2006.

Today, I can announce that the Norwegian Government has decided to increase its annual contribution to child mortality and vaccines to 125 million as of next year.

– and it is our firm promise to keep up annual contributions at this level.

In total, Norway will contribute 1,3 billion dollars through 2015.

Recently we have decided to add another component to our child survival strategy:

The development of partnerships with a few large countries. Our first partner country will be India.

We have signed an agreement with India. And we will help India reach its goal of cutting child mortality by 50 per cent.

We have the ambitious goal of saving 500 000 children per year in India by 2009.

As Professor Mills finds in her Lancet article today there is a critical gap in the financial needs to achieve Millennium Goal No. 4.

The current annual development assistance level of 1.3 billion dollars for this goal is inadequate.

The Lancet estimate is that we need at least to invest 8 billion per year by 2015 to reach our goal.

This brings me to the final component of our strategy. We need to work together to develop a global strategy to reach Millennium Goal No 4 . We need a global business plan.

This plan will spell out clearly how we best can organize ourselves, the financing instruments we need and the pathways to achieve our goal.

The knowledge base represented by you all here today makes me truly optimistic that we will reach our goal.

Reducing child mortality is a worthy goal. We cannot pursue it half-way or part-time.

That is why I invite everybody here, to join this global campaign.

The rewards will be enormous.

Just imagine, for a second, all those millions of people who will survive their childhood.

And when we look back, - when we reach the twilight of our days.

We can lay our ears to the ground.

And listen to the steps of millions of feet.

Thank you