As world leaders gathered for this month’s World Summit at the United Nations, an unprecedented coalition of governments and health organisations joined together to highlight the importance of reducing child and maternal deaths as part of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
To speed up progress in cutting the number of preventable deaths, top advocates for women and children have launched the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child health on the 12 September 2005.
The new partnership will look to unite together the world’s leading organisations that are focused on this issue, and help to combine efforts to provide resources, strategies and political commitments needed to decrease the maternal and child mortality rates across the world.
Although a number of countries have progressed significantly towards the MDGs, however, there are still many that fall far short of achieving the 2015 MDG targets for maternal and child health.
Ann M. Veneman the Executive Director of UNICEF stated, “Each year over half a million women die in pregnancy or childbirth and 10.6 million children die before their fifth birthday. To accelerate progress, we need to integrate our efforts at the global, national and community level.”
Joy Phumaphi, Assistant Director-General of the World Health Organisation said, “Only a focussed, coordinated effort can bring women, newborns and children the health care they need during pregnancy, delivery, the early weeks of life and in childhood. Working with countries on integrated initiatives like this has the potential to transform millions of lives and make critical progress.”
UNICEF report that at least two-thirds of deaths could be avoided by simply providing low-cost, existing interventions.
