September 21, 2014
For the fourth consecutive year, Countdown to 2015 was co-host of a high-level meeting that put women’s and children’s health at the front of the agenda for the annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly. On the Sunday morning immediately before the General Assembly convened, senior government ministers and ambassadors from several countries came together with UN agency officials and civil society advocates for a lively breakfast meeting hosted by Countdown, the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health (PMNCH), and the independent Expert Review Group (iERG), to mobilize renewed attention and energy for improving women and children’s health.
New York
September 21, 2014
For the fourth consecutive year, Countdown to 2015 was co-host of a high-level meeting that put women’s and children’s health at the front of the agenda for the annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly. On the Sunday morning immediately before the General Assembly convened, senior government ministers and ambassadors from several countries came together with UN agency officials and civil society advocates for a lively breakfast meeting hosted by Countdown, the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health (PMNCH), and the independent Expert Review Group (iERG), to mobilize renewed attention and energy for improving women and children’s health.
At the breakfast, Dr. Peter Berman of Harvard, chair of Countdown’s Technical Working Group on Finance, presented new Countdown analysis of financial flows for reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health (RMNCH). The findings showed that, while aid for RMNCH increased during 2011-2012, continued increases in both official development aid and in-country investments are needed in order to accelerate progress towards MDGs 4 and 5.
The importance of increasing investment to strengthen health systems and increase coverage of essential interventions was reinforced by Dr. Luis Huicho, who presented preliminary findings of a Countdown to 2015 in-depth Country Case Study that he is leading in Peru. This study seeks to understand and explain Peru’s success in reducing its rates of maternal, newborn and child mortality between 2000 and 2012, and highlights determining factors for health such as poverty reduction and female education.
At the event, Countdown launched its first Countdown Country Case Study Brief, a one-page report that graphically summarizes the exciting findings of the Countdown case study conducted in Bangladesh, which was published in The Lancet in June 2014.
Countdown co-chair Mickey Chopra, Chief of Health at UNICEF, presented the findings of Countdown’s 2014 report, Fulfilling the Health Agenda for Women and Children, which was launched two months earlier at the PMNCH Partners’ Forum in Johannesburg. Important new data and evidence were also presented from two new reports — the 2014 PMNCH Report on Commitments to the Global Strategy for Women and Children’s Health and the third report from the iERG, which focuses on a vision for women’s and children’s health in the post-2015 era. Richard Horton, Editor-in-Chief of The Lancet and co-chair of the iERG, warned that “the landscape for women’s and children’s health is about to undergo a seismic shift,” and called for the global health community to choose intensified action rather than paralysis in the face of uncertainty.
Also at the event, Dr. Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) stressed that while progress has been made for women and children, the Ebola crisis in West Africa is a reminder “that even excellent progress can be so fragile.” Julia Duncan-Cassell, the Liberian Minister of Gender and Development, emphasized the importance of strengthening health systems before crises arise, and noted that women make up nearly 75% of Ebola fatalities in her country because they care for the ill and wash the bodies of the deceased. Bob Orr, Assistant-Secretary General of the UN and a key leader of the Every Woman Every Child movement, emphasized UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon’s commitment to women’s and children’s health and his conviction that women and children have to be “at the front of the queue, not at the back of the MDG train.” Agnes Binagwaho, Rwanda’s Minister of Health of Rwanda voiced a powerful call for donors to respect country leadership: ‘Ask us what we need and we will tell you; don’t go and speculate: We have a good plan and we know our needs …’
As in past years, the Accountability breakfast offered General Assembly participants an important reminder that women’s and children’s health is central to sustainable development, and set the table for a week of continued discussion focused on action and accountability.