United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon speaks during the Millennium Development Goals Summit at the UN headquarters in New York Wednesday. ((Associated Press))

A global campaign that aims to save the lives of 16 million mothers and children over the next five years was launched by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday with as much as $40 billion US in commitments from world governments and private aid groups.

The Global Strategy for Women's and Children's Health was announced at the end of a three-day summit to review efforts to implement anti-poverty goals — Millennium Development Goals —adopted in 2000 with a deadline of 2015.

These include cutting extreme poverty by half, ensuring universal primary education, halting and reversing the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and cutting child and maternal mortality.

Ban has made the reduction of maternal and child deaths a personal campaign, and it has been a key topic during the summit. Worldwide every year, an estimated eight million children die before reaching their fifth birthday, and about 350,000 women die during pregnancy or childbirth.

Even before the details were announced, however, the international aid organization Oxfam expressed skepticism about how much money was truly new, and how the program would be administered and held accountable.

"That kind of money would go a long way toward reaching the child and maternal health goals, but we have a big concern," said Oxfam spokeswoman Emma Seery. "Where will that money come from?

"Half of the donors cut their aid last year" amid the global economic crisis, she said. "We're just nervous that it will be governments bringing together a lot of previous commitments, and that won't mean much for poor people."