UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon endorses icddr,b’s work

25 SEP 2016

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has commended icddr,b’s decades of work towards solving public health challenges and saving lives, which is supporting the UN’s work to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

In a video message shared by the United Nations, he acknowledged that icddr,b’s interventions targeted for the developing world are directly contributing to sustainable development and this has helped to significantly reduce infant, child and maternal mortality in Bangladesh and beyond.

Mr Ban Ki-moon particularly expressed his gratitude for icddr,b’s commitment to the Every Woman Every Child movement. He anticipated that promoting the health and wellbeing of children, adolescence and women would unleash vast potential and spur equitable inclusive growth.

Expressing gratitude to the UN chief, icddr,b’s executive director Professor John D. Clemens said, “We are grateful and honored to have received this positive and supportive message from the UN Secretary General.”

Professor Clemens added that icddr,b is committed to developing innovative solutions and to generating scientific evidence to help Bangladesh and the global community achieve the SDGs.

Earlier in 2011 Mr Ban Ki-moon visited icddr,b to get a better understanding of the research and low-cost innovations that are saving lives every day.

In Bangladesh, icddr,b's work under its Maternal and Neonatal Health research theme covers innovating, improving and scaling-up of interventions to prevent and treat maternal complications, adverse birth outcomes and life-threatening neonatal conditions.

icddr,b’s Maternal and Childhood Malnutrition research theme also addresses the biological and non-biological mechanisms underpinning maternal and childhood malnutrition, and develops innovative interventions to prevent and treat these conditions, and evaluate the efficacy, feasibility and scalability of new interventions.

Read more about icddr,b’s research.