Thank you very much for coming.
I want to bring to your attention that all the G-8 ministers and senior officials responsible for the developmental cooperation met in Halifax, actually not long ago, April 27 and April 28. They laid the foundation for the developmental issues for the G-8 leaders summit. Also, the Minister of Health of Mali, as well as senior representatives from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, that is the OECD, United Nations agencies and so on, were there.
The reason I listed all of these is that in summary of what they say, they are very much related to what we've been talking about: saving the lives of mothers and children. One of the things they mentioned is accountability and effectiveness in international assistance. We keep saying we want to pour in more and more money, but at the same time, I think these G-8 ministers agree that more determined political action is needed to deliver on existing aid effectiveness commitments, including greater predictability and transparency of aid, reducing transaction costs, and fragmentation. Also, they emphasize the importance of accountability.
That is my first question. I have only two.
The other one is that in all of the panel today, nobody seems to have mentioned anything about children. Nobody seems to have mentioned the importance of nutrition for children. I came from a very humble family in Hong Kong, way back when Hong Kong was needing foreign aid. At that time, my family was able to get some good food for me. Otherwise, I would have died; I wouldn't have lived until now. Also, my mother was able to get good food so that she gave birth to the only son in my parents' family. So in my family history, food, nutrition, and clean water have been very important in raising a family. I'm really disappointed that nobody in our panel actually mentioned anything about that.
Again, the minister has stressed that action is required on factors contributing to improving the health of women and children, such as access to safe drinking water, sanitation, and gender equity. I would like the panel to comment on these few things that have not been mentioned today.