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Vision 2020

My Lords, most of what I wanted to say has already been addressed more eloquently by other Peers, especially by the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, whom I congratulate for introducing the debate. I intended to quote something that he stated in another report. At the risk of repetition, he said that there is a huge shortage of health workers globally and what is needed is a powerful and co-ordinated international response to address that shortage, with the developed countries, including the UK, supporting the scaling-up of training, education and employment of health workers. The UK Government have made an important start with their initiative in Malawi, which provided $99 million over six years to address urgent health and human resource problems. This was a most welcome development and, combined with increased support for health from other donors, has produced some excellent results and is an indication of what can be achieved when such an investment is made. It showed that 40 per cent more doctors were working in Malawi than in the four years previously, and 5 million more people visited a health facility. As I have said, the relatively small expenditure of $99 million over six years on this initiative has made a huge difference and provided such an excellent return on the investment that I would suggest to the Minister that consideration should be given to reordering the priorities of DfID’s aid budget so as to ensure that a greater proportion is allocated towards eye care services. We should bear in mind that this concerns about 300 million individuals in the developing world and the fact that with the increase in population and life expectancy, this problem could well get worse rather than better, despite all the progress that has been made.