Mandela, UK's Brown Join Fight on Child Poverty^*

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown on Monday joined forces with former South African President Nelson Mandela to tackle global child poverty. At a conference aimed at meeting international targets on improving the lot of the world's poorest children by 2015, Brown unveiled plans to provide better education and health to the Third World. And Mandela threw his full support behind the campaign, calling on governments to move children to the top of the world agenda. "We should be remembered for having changed the world so that every child can lead a life of dignity, security and self-fulfillness,'' Mandela told the conference via a live video link-up.... Given that only 10% of research and development spending was devoted to diseases affecting the world's poor, Brown also promised to create new tax incentives for research carried out on diseases like AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. ``And if pharmaceutical companies were prepared to increase the availability of treatments on a pro bono basis--treatments that are genuinely needed--we would be prepared to match that commitment by considering it as a tax deduction,'' Brown said. He also pledged to set up a global fund to provide developing countries with vaccines against childhood diseases.

* Thanks to Prevention News Update for providing this news story.

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