UN General Assembly
2000

may be within our reach. In the time that it takes to deliver each of these statements in the General Assembly, around 300 children under the age of 1 will die. Is this acceptable? Obviously not. Could it be, then, that the human and financial resources necessary to fight this tragedy are so great that they force us into accepting it? The answer again is no. Many of those deaths could be avoided through better management and without an increase in resources. Health, like education, should be a priority sector for development assistance. It is vital to combine efforts, policies and instruments. Direct development assistance must be complemented by mechanisms to resolve the longstanding problems of the poorest countries through reform of the regulatory institutions of the global financial and economic system and through agreements that allow poor countries to access the markets of developed countries without trade barriers. I should like to stress in particular the importance of developing cooperative mechanisms between the United Nations and the Bretton Woods institutions, namely a revitalized Economic and Social Council. Our