A truly global partnership for health.

437 countries, and delivering on the health Millennium Development Goals, is the availability of trained health staff to support the health system. In 2006 the World Health Organization (WHO) published its annual report highlighting the serious shortage in human resources for health. It was estimated that 57 countries have critical shortages in health staff, equivalent to a global shortage of some 2.4 million doctors, nurses, and midwives, or 4 million health workers if managers and other public health workers are included. This shortage is felt most acutely in low income countries with a combination of factors leading to the current situation, including under-investment in the health system; the impact of AIDS on life expectancy of health staff; and the loss of trained staff to other countries, including the UK. The 2006 WHO report marked the launch of a 10-year Global Plan of Action to tackle the issue. inequalities through the Millennium Development Goals. These goals call for countries to work collectively to make changes in current practice and to commit the necessary resources to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, and combat HIV and AIDS, malaria, and other diseases by the year 2015. Achieving the Millennium Development Goals is a central tenet of the UK's current development assistance. To date some progress has been made towards reaching the targets set, but in many countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, the gains are either patchy or non-existent. 2 According to current projections the targets will not be met in many countries, highlighting the need for an urgent and considerably enhanced effort from the global community. One of the greatest challenges to strengthening the health sector in many Despite health being a global right, available data show that in many countries, this right is not yet realised. This is starkly illustrated in the health statistics from around the world. For example, figures show that life expectancy in Liberia for a woman is only 44 years (compared with 81 years for a woman in the UK), and that the maternal mortality ratio in Afghanistan is a staggering 1600/100 000 live births (compared with 11/100 000 live births in the UK). Malaria still kills more than 1 million people annually, most of them children under 5 years of age, and contributes to an under-5 mortality rate in some African countries of over 200 deaths per 1000 live births (or roughly …