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The Prime Minister of UK, Gordon Brown, looks forward to work with at least 20 multinational companies, among them being Google and Vodafone. His aim is to engage into a "development emergency" in some of the poorest countries in the world.

Mr. Brown has been holding talks with world's biggest Internet and telecom companies along with other multinationals, including Goldman Sachs and Wal-Mart, to try to find the right paths towards increasing growth in poor countries. The UN report released recently shows quite little progress in achieving goals that aim towards combating poverty and improving the level of education, health and sanitation.

The prime minister will use 3 set-piece events in 2008. These include a conference in London in spring that will engage the private sector, the meeting of the G8 in Japan in summer 2008 and a session of the United Nations that will be held in New York next autumn. The events are meant to give a boost to the development of goals set by the UN in 2000.

Gordon Brown outlined that today there are 72 million children who are not attending primary school and in some countries 1 in 6 women dies in childbirth. He added that more than a billion people drink polluted water, having no access to drinking water that is safe.

"We know what to do - we need to keep our promises and act. I am therefore calling for an millennium development goals action meeting during the UN general assembly in September to re-examine and galvanise our efforts," he stated.

Mr. Brown held thorough discussions with companies from the private sector. He hopes that these companies will be able to contribute to infrastructure improvement, skills upgrading and provide enough capital for fresh investment.

The editor of the UN's annual human development report, Kevin Watkins, mentioned that in order to reach the millennium development goals it is important to tackle the inequality. It is worth mentioning that child death rates are 2 to 3 times higher for the poorest 20% of people.

"We are all in favor of high growth, but there has been a failure in some high growth countries, such as India, to deliver on human progress because of inequality. The key to achieving the development goals is to concentrate on helping the very poor," outlined Kevin Watkins.

Peter Salama, the chief of health for UNICEF, mentioned that it is important to get the health systems working properly in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia.