We often ask our campaigners to take action on issues affecting children, and it's great when these campaigns are a success and the world sees real progress for children. Here are a couple of recent campaign successes, where you have helped us put it right.
Patent pool success
You may remember a while ago we were asking you to 'push for the pool' - to campaign to make a patent pool for HIV medicines a reality. The idea is that pharmaceutical companies will put their drug patents in the pool to share with others, making the development of HIV and AIDS medicines for children quicker, easier and cheaper. Check out this video by the
StopAIDS campaign which explains more.
This July, after years of campaigning, the first ever patent pool on HIV and AIDS medicines launched. This is huge progress, as this new pool, which is managed by an agency called
UNITAID, could save the lives of children in the developing world by making more HIV treatments available.
The pool has a one year budget and it will need to meet certain targets in order to continue. We now need three companies to commit, offering five drug patents to the pool in order to make it permanent.
UNICEF UK is working with the StopAIDS coalition to develop the next phase of the patent pool campaign so please look out for future updates.
Water and sanitation for all
Children washing their hands at a school in Nepal. © UNICEF/NEP01803/C S KARKI
In April, UNICEF hosted the first ever high-level meeting of the global partnership ‘Sanitation and Water for All’, which aims to address the barriers preventing the water and sanitation
Millennium Development Goal (MDG) being achieved in the countries that are most off-track.
The meeting was attended by 30 ministers from 18 countries, as well as important members of the Department for International Development in the UK. The gathering looked at how developing countries, donors, agencies and other development partners can work better together to ensure all children have access to sanitation and drinking water.
There is still a need to focus further on helping the most disadvantaged communities access water and sanitation. The latest UN report shows that only 42 per cent of aid given to safe water and sanitation actually goes to the world’s poorest countries, where it is most needed.
The new UK Government coalition recognises the importance of proper sanitation for all children, and the new DFiD Secretary of State, Andrew Mitchell, announced: “our programme for Government clearly states that we will prioritise aid spending on programmes to ensure everyone has access to clean water and sanitation”.