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Summary: Save the Children today welcomed "Everyone has the Right to Health", the statement by 32 former world leaders including Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter and Vaclav Havel.
The statement calls for governments worldwide to act to promote access to clean water, health care, nutrition and sanitation for the world's poorest. Anna Taylor, Save the Children Head of Health, said: "The world's former leaders have today laid down the gauntlet to their successors. They have said that everyone must have the right to a decent standard of healthcare. Save the Children UK wholeheartedly endorses this statement. "In a world where 11 million children die every year from preventable causes like diarrhoea and pneumonia, it is inexcusable that the world's poorest do not yet have access to a basic level of healthcare they can afford. "Save the Children UK's research shows that if fees charged to the sick were abolished in 20 countries in Africa, the lives of about 250,000 children under the age of five would be saved each year."