Bill Frist: What the World Can Learn from Pittsburgh

Sep 15th, 2009 10:11 AM UTC
By Chris Scott

Senator Bill Frist, chairman of Save the Children’s Survive to 5 campaign, wrote this great op-ed in anticipation of next week’s G20 Summit in Pittsburgh, PA. The op-ed is a fantastic look at child mortality in the city of Pittsburgh and around the world.

We’ll have more on the G20 Summit soon, including some on the ground reports from Pittsburgh. Excerpts from Senator Frist’s op-ed below, full piece here.

When world leaders chart a course toward a more prosperous future at next week’s G-20 summit, Pittsburgh can inspire in more ways than one.

The city built on steel has renewed its shine as a center for research and technology and become a model for economic comeback. When this recession recedes, Pittsburgh is poised to jump far ahead of cities where “rust belt” still rings true.

But progress is not measured solely in economic terms. Presidents and prime ministers should note a different kind of progress that Pittsburgh pursued and achieved in the years it was still building its first boom. This kind of progress has yet to reach many parts of the planet, but, in the interests of all, must.

Sustainable recovery and long-term economic growth depend on improving the well-being of the world’s most vulnerable people and ensuring they, too, participate in recovery. To that end, improving the health of children and mothers is fundamental.

G-20 leaders also have a key opportunity to promote policies offering a healthy start to the world’s most vulnerable children. In L’Aquila, the eight leading industrialized nations took an important step in this direction. That summit’s official declaration recognized the importance of improving maternal, child and newborn health and how (90 years after Pittsburgh was told so) effective measures to prevent child deaths are proven and available now.

But world leaders passed on committing resources or introducing a mechanism to spur concrete action to help poor countries. Now it’s time they tell developing countries: If you produce a viable plan to reduce child deaths, we will not allow you to fail for lack of resources.

-Chris Scott

TAGS: 2009 Pittsburgh G20, G20, Sen. Bill Frist M.D.