Weak healthcare systems and lack of money hamper efforts to reduce mortality worldwide

Plenty of cheap, simple ways exist to tackle global poverty, but the world lacks the commitment to implement them, health experts and economists said at an international conference in London last week.

Convened to celebrate the centenary of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine, the conference aimed to assess progress, at the halfway point, towards meeting the eight millennium development goals set by the United Nations for 2015.

One goal is to cut by two thirds the 10 million deaths each year of children aged under 5 years old, but only seven of the 60 countries with the highest child mortalities are on …