The coming few days will be interesting, I am sure. Hard work, too. But in a beautiful city and excellent venue. Unfortunately, I am not going to be able to join you in your work throughout this week. I would therefore like to use this opportunity to share with you some of my ideas about what we are trying to do and what our challenges are - for this week and beyond.
Poverty is the underlying obstacle to human well-being.
Despite the unprecedented prosperity and quality of life enjoyed in large parts of the world, 1.2 billion people survive on less than one dollar a day and another 1.3 billion scrape out a living on less than two dollars a day. People are poor not only because their income is low, but because they do not have access to basic services, such as health and education, which would have increased their freedom. Poverty deprives people of the opportunity to live a real life. For poor people, becoming ill frequently means becoming poorer - both directly, because you have to spend a part of your small income to pay for treatment and medicines, and indirectly, because your choices become so limited. A rickshaw driver in Khulna, Bangladesh may well know that he lives in a place where the risk of tuberculosis is high.