On September 23, 2012, as the 67th meeting of the United Nations General Assembly was about to begin, Countdown to 2015 joined with the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health (PMNCH) and the independent Expert Review Group on Information and Accountability for Women’s and Children’s Health (iERG) to co-sponsor a brunch for high-level participants from developing countries, donors, and the RMNCH community.

At this event, entitled Keeping Promises, Measuring Results: How Are We Measuring Up?, the overarching theme was accountability. Three Countdown articles were published in a special MNCH issue of The Lancet to coincide with this event and the UN General Assembly meeting: Countdown speakers at the brunch included authors of all three articles. Professor Zulfiqar Bhutta, co-chair of Countdown, offered an introduction: “Presenting the latest evidence on accountability.” Professor Cesar Victora, chair of Countdown’s Equity Working Group, then presented a summary of the findings in the 2012 Report.  Three speakers from Niger — Dr. Mallam Eklye Saidou, Secretary-General of the Ministry of Health; Khaled Bensaid of UNICEF-Niger, and Dr. Agbessi Amouzou of Johns Hopkins University —presented a summary of the findings of their Countdown case study of advances in child health in Niger, as published in The Lancet. Justine Hsu of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, then presented an analysis of the latest data on official development aid for MNCH, as also detailed in an article in The Lancet.

Countdown’s presentations can be downloaded below:

• Building a Future for Women and Children: The 2012 Countdown Report(2.01 MB)
• Case Study: Maternal & Child Health in Niger (Countdown to 2015)(260.84 KB)
• New Analysis on ODA for MNCH: 2003-2010(354.01 KB)

Also at this event, PMNCH presented The PMNCH 2012 Report – Analysing Progress on Commitments to the Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health, which reviews progress on commitments made by some 220 stakeholders to the UN Secretary-General’s Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health. iERG co-chair Dr. Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, presented the findings of Every Woman Every Child: From Commitments to Action, the iERG’s first report summarizing progress on the UN Secretary-General’s Global Strategy on Women’s and Children’s Health and the recommendations of the Commission on Information and Accountability for Women’s and Children’s Health.

Photo credits Adam Stoltman