Conservatives pledge a billion dollars per year to halt malaria
15 January 2007
In his first major speech on international aid, Shadow Chancellor George Osborne today vowed to make malaria in developing counties a disease of the past by pledging that a future Conservative Government would spend 500 million pounds ($1 billion) per year tackling the disease, until the UN Millennium Goal on malaria has been met.
Speaking to NGOs, Ugandan politicians and the aid community in Kampala, during a 3 day trip spent accompanying Professor Jeffrey Sachs, former special advisor to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on the Millennium Development Goals, George Osborne said:
"I have spent these last days alongside Professor Jeffrey Sachs, the man who has done more than almost anyone else to confront the challenge of extreme poverty, learning about your efforts to meet the Millennium Development Goals, and learning what we in Britain can do to support those efforts.
First, we can live up to our promise made many years ago to contribute 0.7% of our GNP to international aid. The commitment of the Conservative Party to increased spending on international development could not be clearer. We will increase Britain's spending on international development from 0.47% of GDP today to 0.7% of GDP by 2013.
The second thing that Britain can and should do more of: fighting disease.
In recognition of both the terrible impact of the disease and the immense economic and social benefits of its eradication, I can today announce for the first time that a future Conservative government will spend a minimum of £500 million - or $1bn - a year tackling malaria in Sub-Saharan Africa.
That is one third of the total amount that the WHO believes is required to win the war against malaria. And we will continue to spend this money every year until the Millennium Development Goals on malaria have been met.
This is an unprecedented commitment by a single country. It will be met from our expanding aid budget.
I hope that other nations follow our lead, and join us as we fight to make malaria deaths a thing of the past. Let our generation stand up and say: we won the war against malaria."
