WORLD: "Healthcare workers - the true lifesavers - must be supported," says UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

UNITED NATIONS, NEW YORK (UNNews), March 4, 2008: The time has come to focus on supporting and retaining health workers – “the true lifesavers in the society of every nation”– Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the first-ever world forum on that topic, which convened in Kampala, Uganda, today. “Almost 60 countries – most of them in Africa – face such critical shortages of health workers that they cannot provide basic health care to all their people,” Mr. Ban said at the Global Forum for Human Resources in Health, which expects over 1,000 government leaders and experts to meet under the auspices of the World Health Organization (WHO). In his statement, Mr. Ban emphasized the crucial part that health care plays in economic development and in reaching the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which aim to reduce extreme poverty and other global ills by 2015. Source: UN News