During the United Nations General Assembly, we convened family offices, institutional investors, philanthropists, c-level executives of large pharmaceutical companies, Ministers of Health, and Heads of UN Agencies to create sustainable health systems for Africa.

Over the past 20 years, the world has taken unprecedented steps to improve and save lives.

• Maternal mortality rates have fallen by almost half.
• In Eastern Asia, Northern Africa and Southern Asia, maternal mortality has declined by around two-thirds.
• Hundreds of millions of people have emerged from extreme poverty.
• In 46 countries, women now hold more than 30% of seats in national parliament in at least one chamber.
• For the world’s wealthiest, real net worth has increased from $1 trillion to almost $7 trillion.
• And, over the next twenty years, the world’s wealthiest are expected to transfer more than $30 trillion to their children and grandchildren.

Despite determined global progress,

• Every two minutes, a woman dies in childbirth.
• In sub-Saharan Africa, women are 136 times more likely to die than in developed countries.
• More than six million children still die before their fifth birthday each year.
• At the end of 2013, there were an estimated 35 million people living with HIV, and 240,000 children were newly infected.
• HIV is the leading cause of death for women of reproductive age worldwide.
• AIDS is now the leading cause of death among adolescents (ages 10–19) in Africa and the second most common cause of death among adolescents globally.

This cannot be the world we share.

A measure of a civilization is how it treats its most vulnerable. We can do more. We can create positive change in our lifetimes.

With the involvement of multiple stakeholders, we can work together to catalyze responsible business growth and unlock innovative forms of financing at an unprecedented scale.

In the next 20 years, the brightest minds and breakthrough innovators will leverage their collective resources and shared aspirations to create companies that will reshape traditional industries.

There has never been a greater time in history when capital is being allocated to companies and investors focused on social impact. Therefore, the opportunity to do well by doing good is unprecedented.