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

Former Senator Bill Frist was on MSNBC’s Morning Joe this morning and spoke at length about deadly and preventable diseases in Africa. He also spoke about the need for clean water and what a long way that goes in saving children’s lives.

Senator Frist also has an op-ed in today’s Washington Times on the state of Africa’s children which you can read here.

You can check out the clip here, partial transcript below:

These deaths are preventable, and it’s cheap and we know how to do that. And people think of malaria and HIV and tuberculosis– all very serious– but the number one disease is cardiovascular disease. And we must continue to focus on malaria and bed nets, but simply clean water can go further in saving lives inexpensively around the world.

-Chris Scott

Writing in the Charlotte Observer, former Senator Bill Frist offers his take on the state of global health and President Obama’s recently announced global health strategy. Praising the Millennium Challenge Corporation’s holistic approach to global health, Frist explains how the MCC can help lay “the groundwork for poverty reduction and economic development.”

Excerpts below, full piece here:

Economists would argue that one of the surest ways out of poverty is for people to increase their incomes to take care of themselves and their families. For incomes to rise, developing economies must work to generate growth opportunities through trade and commerce, reliable infrastructure, and sound policies that create and sustain jobs for the poor.

When the poor are stricken by disease and weak health, they are unable to take advantage of these opportunities. Rather than climbing out of poverty, they fall deeper into it. It’s clear that economic development and human development are intertwined. Growth needs a healthy workforce. The productivity and development of communities – and their ability to participate in the global economy – rely on the physical well-being of citizens to innovate, build, harvest, and work. Sustaining such productivity requires children to learn in school, not fall behind because they are too sick to concentrate. By building healthier, hopeful, and productive communities, we build safer and more secure societies that can alleviate global poverty and contribute to global prosperity. When communities are productive and thriving they don’t become breeding grounds for dangerous extremism.

We need to rethink America’s global health diplomacy within this context […]

-Chris Scott

Last week a few ONE staffers went to see Senator William H. Frist and Chairman of the Coca-Cola Company E. Neville Isdell launch the Declaration on U.S. Policy and the Global Challenge of Water. We were excited to hear these leaders outline practical steps the United States can take to realize President Obama’s inaugural address commitment to “let clean waters flow” in the world’s poorest nations.

The Declaration on U.S. Policy and the Global Challenge of Water makes the case that water is a critical resource “that will become even more critical in the future.” It also presents evidence that “water is intricately linked to the stability and security of communities and nations, human health, education, economic prosperity, humanitarian relief, and stewardship of the physical environment” and that “water is vital to other key resources essential to the human condition, most notably agriculture and energy.”

Endorsed by over 35 leaders from business, government, and academia, the Declaration recommends the adoption of seven action steps:

1. The new U.S. president should spearhead a comprehensive and sustained global campaign to address the global challenge of water.
2. The president should develop an integrated strategy for national action on the global water campaign.
3. The president should appoint a special high-level representative to lead implementation of the U.S. global water campaign.
4. The special representative should be directly reinforced by a core team to help guide implementation of the water campaign, in addition to expanded capacities at the Department of State at the behest of the special representative.
5. The proposed U.S. campaign should be commensurate with the magnitude of the challenge—which means a significant increase in the amount and duration of resources committed under the campaign.
6. The U.S. government should attempt to energize and catalyze international efforts.
7. The U.S. government should reinforce public/private-sector partnerships.

You can read and sign the water declaration and watch the declaration release online.

-Rosie Stafford, ONE

In an editorial at CNN.com today, Senator Bill Frist provides some analysis and commentary on President Bush’s work in the fight against HIV/AIDS during his 8 years in office. He also writes about the trip he took to Rwanda this summer with ONE and how that impacted his own personal support of global AIDS relief efforts.

Excerpts below, full piece here

I was in the first row in the House chamber when three quarters through his State of the Union address, the president boldly said: “I ask the Congress to commit $15 billion over the next five years … to turn the tide against AIDS in the most afflicted nations of Africa and the Caribbean” and “lead the world in sparing innocent people from a plague of nature.”

And lead the world we did. No president in history had made such a commitment against a single disease. Those words and the action that followed meant that instead of another 30 million people dying from HIV infections, maybe just another 20 million will.

…Six months ago, Tom Daschle, Mike Huckabee, John Podesta, Cindy McCain and I (yes, we five of different persuasions do work together!) went to Rwanda on a fact-finding trip.

Our visits with villagers all over the country opened our eyes to how Bush’s five-year, $1.2 billion effort to combat malaria has provided 4 million insecticide-treated bed nets and 7 million life-saving drug therapies to vulnerable people. Yes, George Bush the healer.

Future historians will also note what today’s pundits ignore: total US government development aid to Africa quadrupled from $1.3 billion in 2001 to more than $5 billion in 2008. What’s more, the Bush administration doubled foreign aid worldwide over the past eight years. You have to go back to the Truman years to match that.

And the president revolutionized the way we give aid with the creation of the Millennium Challenge Corporation, now active in 35 countries. This $6.7 billion public-private partnership for the first time ties aid to accountability based on a country’s governing well, fighting corruption and commitment to economic freedoms.

-Chris Scott

Jenny Dyer of Hope Through Healing Hands just passed along this great blog post from Senator Bill Frist. Check it out!

We had a fantastic event on Saturday morning with the women of Grace Chapel Church here in Leipers Fork, TN. What an amazing bunch of women!

A few months ago, my good friend Reese Smith introduced the Knit One, Save One Campaign, a national grassroots effort launched by the global humanitarian organization Save the Children and the Warm Up America Foundation, to his wife, Emily, an avid knitter and member of the “Knitting with Grace” club at the church. The initiative aims to draw attention to the 4 million newborns that die each year in the first month of life in the developing world. Participants are asked to make a baby cap, and are also encouraged to write a personal note to President-elect Barack Obama urging him to lead the way to save millions of babies globally.

Emily Smith, Beth Ann Bright, Mary Bit Mahaffey and a number of other women in the group committed to 100 caps. And, like the story of the loaves and the fishes, they just multiplied exponentially! Saturday, the “Knitting with Grace” club presented me with over 500 knitted caps and over 500 caps made by machine. Over 1000 caps!

These little caps will each be shipped, along with thousands from all 50 states to pregnant women and new moms and their babies in Save the Children’s programs in Africa and Asia. Hypothermia is a contributing cause of death for newborns, especially small babies unable to maintain their body temperature. To keep infants safe and warm, these little caps will be given for them to wear along with helpful advice to moms about hygiene and breastfeeding. These little caps will be a key component of a life saving package.

It was so exciting to see the amazing work these women had done. Thank you Grace Chapel Church for your initiative, advocacy, awareness-raising, and hard work for the least of these.

Read more about the campaign, and see how many caps Americans have made. The deadline for the project has been extended to January 31st. Let us know if you would like to be involved!

Best,

Senator Bill Frist, M.D.

P.S. Go to Hope through Healing Hands for more information on this project and other simple things you can do to save lives.

The confirmation hearings for former Senator Tom Daschle’s nomination for Secretary of Health and Human Services are currently underway. Just moments ago, former Senator Bob Dole mentioned Daschle’s work around ONE Vote ’08 as an example of Daschle’s dedication to healthcare both at home and abroad.

Click below for a clip of Bob Dole’s remarks, and check out some background information on Senator Tom Daschle here.

Bob Dole:

He also worked on another bipartisan effort with another former Senate majority leader, Senator Bill Frist on the ONE Vote ’08 Campaign addressing health and poverty in developing countries. As most of you know, Senator Daschle has spent a good part of his career focused on healthcare.

-Chris Scott

Today the New York Times ran an op-ed advocating for the incoming administration to adopt the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) as a central tool for development. The article explains that “The long-term engagement with the United States that is required for any country to earn a Millennium Challenge Corporation compact provides a platform for the kind of robust diplomacy that President-elect Obama has embraced. As he seeks to adapt American foreign assistance to a transformed world, one decisive step he can take is to signal his strong support of the corporation’s approach to global development.”

The piece, authored by the four non-government board members of the MCC (Lorne Craner, Bill Frist, Kenneth Hackett, and Alan Patricof), posits that the kind of aid MCC delivers – long-term aid given based on a clear set of indicators for projects defined by the recipient country, in which the recipient country takes responsibility for their development – works best. It also cites examples of the ‘MCC effect’; the idea that countries who are not yet compact-eligible will work independently to better their indicators due to the incentive of becoming eligible for large-scale support and funding.

We’ll continue to keep you updated about the position of the MCC within the new administration.

-Beth Adler, ONE Policy Analyst

At September’s special United Nation’s Summit, we had a chance to show a short video to a group of world leaders at the Secretary General’s reception. The film – “Celebrate, Accelerate” – marks the progress on the Millennium Development Goals to date and encourages further, faster commitments going forward.

Hope you enjoy it!

-Weldon Kennedy

I’m watching the RNC tonight where Senator Frist, Co-Chair of ONE Vote ‘08, just gave a speech that spoke directly to many of ONE’s issues. Some highlights below, the full script after the jump.

“Health builds trust ,and health bridges divides. That’s why America’s investment in medical diplomacy is a long-term investment in national security. Health is a currency for peace.

I’m proud to tell you that it was a Republican president and a Republican-led Congress that launched our nation’s historic initiative to fight AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis in the world’s poorest countries — the greatest global health commitment in history.

Has it made a difference? Oh yes! In just six years, the number of Africans on life-saving treatment jumped from 50,000 to over 2 million! The incidence of malaria has been slashed by two-thirds in some countries. Today, 20 million more children are in school.

But much work remains to be done.

HIV/AIDS continues to hollow out entire generations of people at the prime of their lives. It’s easy for people to lose hope.

And when they do, the vacuum is filled with desperation, instability, and – yes, the seeds of terrorism.”

“we can be the generation to make extreme poverty… history.”

(more…)