2013reportAccountability for Maternal, Newborn & Child Survival: The 2013 Update

Countdown launched its 2013 Accountability Report at the Women Deliver conference, held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in May 2013. This report, Accountability for Maternal, Newborn & Child Survival: The 2013 Update, highlights country achievements in increasing coverage of key interventions, and identify remaining challenges many countries face in reaching all women and children with life-saving services. It includes one-page country profiles, for each of the 75 countries where more than 95% of all maternal and child deaths occur, that focus on the core indicators selected in 2011 by the Commission on Information and Accountability for Women’s and Children’s Health, encompassing key elements of the reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health (RMNCH) continuum of care.

With fewer than 1,000 days remaining until the 2015 deadline for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), this report provides urgently-needed evidence about country progress –and challenges preventing progress – in scaling up the health interventions that work to save women’s and children’s lives. Its key findings include:

  • Declining global levels of maternal and child mortality, but slower progress in some countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, where fertility levels typically remain high: These countries must be prioritized for collective global, regional, and national action.
  • Newborn deaths now accounting for 40% or more of all child deaths in 35 of the Countdown countries:  Improving newborn survival, including reducing stillbirths, must be a major focus of policies and programs.
  • Unacceptably high levels of stunting, a form of growth failure resulting from chronic undernutrition, in virtually all 75 countries: Nutrition must be an essential ingredient of maternal, newborn, and child survival programs.
  • Wide inequities in coverage for key interventions, both across and within Countdown countries: Global and national efforts must focus on reaching the poorest and other vulnerable sub-groups of the population.
  • High levels of fertility and unmet need for family planning highlight the need to broaden access to contraception: Growing political momentum around family planning must be translated into substantially increased resources.

Countdown’s 2013 Accountability Report can be downloaded below, either in its entirety or in its component parts:

Full Report

pdfFull Report (including profiles)[25 MB]

pdfFull Report (without profiles) [2 MB]

Country Profiles

pdfAll profiles [24 MB]

pdfProfiles: countries A-C [6 MB]

pdfProfiles: countries D-K [6 MB]

pdfProfiles: countries L-R [6 MB]

pdfProfiles: countries S-Z [6 MB]

The highest-resolution PDF file for each country’s individual profile, along with country profiles from 2012, 2010, 2008, and 2005, and equity country profiles published by Countdown in 2012 and 2010, are available for download here.

The coverage data used to construct Countdown’s 2013 report  are publicly available, and can be downloaded here. For more information about Countdown’s datasets, please contact the Countdown Secretariat at  countdown@jhu.edu. The most updated country data on the coverage indicators tracked in Countdown are available at www.childinfo.org.