Save the Children's Matt Phillips has been at the G8 conference in St Petersburg, monitoring progress on last years committements to reduce poverty and making sure our campaign for free healthcare in the poorest countries gets heard at the highest level.
Following is his report:

“This G8 has quashed the expectations of the world’s poor and the millions campaigning with them. The leaders have talked about the things that matter to children – health and education. However, the G8 has stopped short of acting as ambitiously as they need to on tackling world poverty. The lack of urgency and ambition has put the promises made at Gleneagles at risk. The G8 can and must do more.

"The G8 produced outcomes on infectious diseases and education. Encouraging words back prior commitments such as funding the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and Malaria and support the education Fast Track Initiative along with an Africa Update that acknowledges aid effectiveness.

"But these are not major new commitments and action on health and education has fallen short of what is needed - concrete plans to help poor countries build free, essential health and educational systems

"This is a beauty contest of initiatives to tackle diseases, but the world’s poorest children will still be footing the bill. Unless the G8 take action on concrete backing for poor countries who want to make healthcare free, children will continue to die because they simply can’t pay the health fees now endemic to Africa.

"Rich countries encouraged Africa to make the poor pay for healthcare. The policy failed. Children are dying in their droves as a result. The G8 noticed this last year at Gleneagles, but today simply ignored the issue.

"Positive steps in the G8’s healthcare communiqué are
* Action to deliver prior commitments on funding lifesaving initiatives such as the Global Fund to fight AIDS, NB and Malaria.
* Attention to research and production of vaccines to tackle poor-country diseases.

"However despite mentioning the core issue of financing health systems, the G8 have not delivered an action plan to support poor countries to establish essential systems staffed by enough nurses, doctors and equipment."

More worrying they have highlighted health insurance programmes as a way of covering costs. These need to prove their effectiveness before getting such enthusiastic backing.