Full negotiation on this item will begin in October, and already we see emerging unprecedented global support for strong action. Adoption of the Convention, and its implementation, will be a crucial move by nations of the world to adopt healthy public policies. Many of you would say yes, and I share that view. But I would like us to widen our ambitions. Health is important not only for how it lengthens life and improves its quality - it is also an important contributor to economic and social development .
Poverty perpetuates ill health.
In all our efforts we have to give special attention to the challenge of reducing poverty. He argues that 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, he says, seriously deprives people of a number of choices they must have available in order to live a satisfying life. But improvements in health reduce poverty and enable growth. As in Europe at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, we have seen that developing countries which invest relatively more, and well, on health are likely to achieve higher economic growth.