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African Ministers responsible for population and development have reaffirmed their strong commitment to the Programme of Action adopted ten years ago at the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), stressing that the Millennium Development Goals could not be achieved unless the programme was fully implemented. In a ministerial declaration adopted on Friday at the end of the regional review conference on the 10th anniversary of ICPD in Dakar, the Ministers promised to "exert maximum efforts” in building on the progress achieved in the last 10 years through the Cairo and Dakar-Ngor programmes. The ministerial declaration emphasized the promotion of gender equality, the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS, universal access to comprehensive sexual and reproduction health information and services as well as the reduction of maternal morbidity which claims more than 240,000 lives each year in Africa. According to the ministers, these goals are key to breaking the cycle of poverty and improving the quality of life of the people of the continent In a message, the United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan called for vigorous implementation of the practical blueprints, warning :“The price of inaction – roughly 2.5 million maternal deaths, 7.5 million child deaths and 49 million maternal injuries in the next 10 years – is too high to contemplate.” In the message delivered on his behalf by the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for West Africa, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, Annan reminded the ministers that Africans were looking to them to act with greater urgency to save the continent from such deadly scenarios. In an address to the ministers, the Prime Minister of Senegal, Maky Sall, noted that Africa still had the highest maternal mortality rates in the world. The reduction of those rates would require the integration of reproductive health into primary health care, he said.
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Copyright © Economic Commission for Africa 2004