From July 2009, World Vision led an inter-agency effort to create a global framework for maternal and child health. In December, the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon met with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and agreed to develop a Joint Action Plan to mobilise support for women's and children's health.

World Vision and the Partnership on Maternal Newborn and Child Health decided to bring its framework development process under this new umbrella. The Secretary General's office asked World Vision to be part of a small working group drafting the Joint Action Plan.

The plan was released for consultation on June 7. It will be used to raise new global financial commitments for Millennium Development Goals Four (reduce child mortality) and Five (improve the health of mothers). That, in turn, will enable a coherent, global response to the preventable deaths of millions of pregnant women, unborn children, babies and infants.

I was pleased to join senior World Vision staff at the Pacific Health Summit in London toward the end of June to discuss this important development. We used speaking and panel opportunities to present World Vision’s approach to maternal and child health to key figures in science, industry and policy-creation. We invited companies and organisations to partner with us in a variety of ways. We discussed the integrated delivery of health care and the need to develop standard indicators for national health systems. These indicators are needed if we are monitor progress toward meeting the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.

World Vision is investing US$1.5 billion in health interventions, between now and 2015, as a practical commitment to the Child Health Now campaign.

Tell your leaders that five years should not be a child's lifetime. Sign the petition at www.childhealthnow.org...