Prime Minister Naoto Kan pledged Wednesday during a U.N. summit on eradicating poverty that Tokyo will offer $8.5 billion over five years starting in 2011 to help improve the health of mothers and babies as well as education services in poor countries.
In a speech at the summit on the U.N. Millennium Development Goals on poverty reduction, he unveiled the "Kan Commitment" in health and education, an area in which progress on the 2000 MDG goals for achievement in 2015 lags far behind that in other sectors.
Kan said Tokyo will implement policies to achieve the health-related MDGs in line with his goal of realizing "a society in which human suffering is reduced to a minimum" through efforts to minimize "sources of misery such as disease, poverty and conflicts." He has advocated the slogan domestically.
Japan will offer $5 billion over the five years to improve maternal and pediatric health services and to combat HIV, tuberculosis and malaria as well as international health threats such as the spread of new types of influenza.