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A child receives an oral polio vaccine in Ivory Coast. Improved vaccines are helping save children's lives globally.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Editor's note: Jeffrey D. Sachs is director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University and the author of "The Price of Civilization."

(CNN) -- There is a hidden revolution at work that can transform the lives of a billion of the poorest people on the planet.

The dream of health for all, even the poorest of the poor, can become a reality because of recent breakthroughs in technology and health systems. Scientific results that our Millennium Villages Project team published this week in The Lancet, coupled with broader trends around the world, should be a wake-up call: We can end the deaths of millions of young children and mothers each year by building on recent innovations.

In 2006, the Millennium Villages Project and impoverished communities around Africa jointly embarked upon the fight against extreme poverty, hunger and disease. The idea was to use low-cost, cutting-edge technologies to overcome ancient scourges like malaria and mothers dying in childbirth. Today, there is no deep mystery about what to do to stop these deaths, since the diagnostic tests, medicines and procedures are known. The challenge is to scale up these life-saving approaches.

Jeffrey D. Sachs

In three short years, starting from conditions of massive death tolls and a lack of health services, the Millennium Villages were able to reduce the deaths of children under 5-years-old by around 22%, roughly three times the rate of improvement of the countries at large. The progress is continuing as low-cost health services expand. The lessons extend far beyond this specific project.

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Poor children die of three main categories of disease: infections, nutritional deficiencies and conditions around childbirth. The technologies and procedures to fight all these causes of death are improving dramatically. Therein lies a great hope.

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Global health within our grasp, if we don't give up

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Home » Diets that Work » Global health within our grasp, if we don't give up