Conference Calls for Major Investments in Health Services to Prevent 10 Million Maternal and Child Deaths

CAPE TOWN — A three-day conference on tracking global progress to reduce maternal, newborn and child deaths has concluded today with a call for scaled-up investments in basic health services and human resources to reduce the preventable deaths of over 10 million children and women each year.

The call was made by the ministers, parliamentarians and other participants in the three day Countdown to 2015 gathering convened to assess progress in providing essential health services for women and children in the 68 developing countries which account for 97 per cent of maternal and child deaths worldwide. According to the 2008 report, Tracking Progress in Maternal, Newborn & Child Survival, released here, few of the 68 countries are making adequate progress to reach Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 4 and 5 on reducing child mortality and improving maternal health.

Parliamentarians who participated in joint sessions with the Countdown conference added their voices of support. Delegates attending the 118th Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union have committed to scaled-up action to reach the MDGs 4 and 5, and agreed to review progress at their next Assembly in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in April 2009.

Participants in the Countdown conference agreed to hold their next gathering in 2010, vowing to accelerate country action, and to monitor donor investments in maternal, newborn and child health and data-gathering.

In the statement issued today, the conference participants committed themselves to an intensive effort to: 

• Sustain and expand successful efforts to achieve high and equitable coverage of effective and high-impact interventions that save lives and improve the health of mothers and children, and thereby contribute to the fight against poverty;

• Integrate efforts to address undernutrition with broader maternal and child health strategies;

• Support initiatives to stop early marriage, early childbirth and other harmful practices, to keep adolescent girls in schools and to promote good health-seeking behaviour among them;

• Strengthen primary health care, linked to the achievement of measurable results;

• Invest in strengthening health systems, including efforts to improve the quality, accessibility, affordability and coverage of essential health services, with a particular focus on priority periods within the continuum of care and strengthening links with interventions addressing HIV/AIDS;

• Invest in infrastructure development and human resources in relation to ethical recruitment and training of health workers, particularly skilled attendants, at all levels, assuring a committed and motivated health workforce;

• Allocate more resources to research, monitoring and evaluation for maternal, reproductive, newborn and child health, and strengthening the use of data to guide implementation;

• Address inequities in coverage of care among different geographic, socioeconomic, age and gender groups;

• Hold governments, finance institutions and international organizations accountable for making adequate resources available to achieve MDGs 4 and 5, and other health-related MDGs;

• Ensure predictable, long-term financing for reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health which reflects countries' priorities and plans.

The final Countdown to 2015 conference Statement of Commitment can be found here.

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Contact Information:

Tunga Namiljilsuren, Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health, tel: +41 79 477 2678, namjilsurent@who.int

Katja Iversen, UNFPA, tel: +1 212 297 5016, iversen@unfpa.org