President Kufuor,
President Robinson,
Secretary Albright,
Mr. Lob-Levyt,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,
I am very pleased to have been asked to participate as an honorary member in the Every Child Council and I am delighted to have a new occasion to voice my support for the mission and outstanding achievements of GAVI.
I first had the opportunity to acknowledge GAVI?s work in 2005, during a conference in Barcelona on child mortality in developing countries.
In 2006, I had the pleasure of attending the GAVI Fund Board reception, hosted by the Spanish Government in Madrid, when my country decided to support GAVI?s life-saving efforts.
GAVI is making an extraordinary contribution that represents the bold action required to achieve the Millennium Development Goals for child and maternal health.
"...This Summit clearly put forward the collective efforts carried out by the international community in order to achieve a widely established vaccination program in developing countries..."
As a mother, I am very grateful for the healing work that GAVI does in more than 70 countries.
Nearly 150 million children have been immunized and 2.3 million deaths have been avoided.
Truly, the work of the GAVI Alliance has begun very well, but we are in a race against time.
In the time it takes to hold this reception, or to go to the cinema, or to take the express train from here to Washington D.C., thousands of children will die needlessly, killed by diseases that we could prevent.
Our focus is, therefore, the lives of millions of children over the next 10 to 20 years.
That is the purpose of The GAVI Fund?s Immunize Every Child Campaign.
It is about one child and every child -what every child deserves and what each child means to its mother, father, and family-, something precious beyond compare.
This is a moral issue, something we feel within our heart. But it is also a political issue of nation building and economic development. Immunization is central to basic health care, and basic health care is a building block for healthy and solid communities.
Over the next decade, the GAVI Alliance must mobilize more resources to reach every at-risk child in programme countries and to invest in a new generation of vaccines against deadly diseases.
The search for this funding has led GAVI to you: philanthropists, entrepreneurs, and leaders in a wide variety of disciplines, with talents, and resources needed to solve this global problem.
The fact that we are gathered here tonight -Governments, International Agencies, the private sector, civil society organizations, and individuals- means we have already begun to do our part.
Thank you.