The Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health launch progress report

The  Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health‘s (PMNCH) 2012 report was launched on 23rd September in New York. The report – developed by a collaboration of health experts and organisations including World Vision International’s Stefan Germann (below) - analyses progress made towards tackling child and maternal mortality by focusing on commitments to the Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health.

The report finds that the Global Strategy has been a catalyst for more focused and coordinated efforts for women's and children's health. The work of 220 stakeholders to the Global Strategy is analysed, including World Vision which pledged $1.5 billion over 5 years to help end preventable child deaths.  

However it does identify that whilst implementation is underway the achievement of the strategy faces some constraints needing additional action. The report proposes seven key recommendations to ensure the strategy is achieved:

• Provide additional support to countries with high mortality rates and/or are off-track to achieving MDGs 4 and 5 but currently receiving little support;
• Focus commitments on interventions that address major causes of death and are currently receiving little attention;
• Leverage additional financial resources to further reduce the funding gap identified in the Global Strategy;
• Address constraints to implementation of commitments, in particular related to financial and human resources;
• Integrate efforts with other sectors that are critical to improving women’s and children’s health such as education and water and sanitation;
• Support the implementation of the recommendations by the Commission on Information and Accountability (COIA,) including strengthening health information systems and tracking of international and domestic financial resources;
• Include indicators and means to track progress and impact in future commitments.

The Global Strategy was launched in September 2010 by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon who brought nations, business and charities together to commit to a plan that would save 16 million lives in the 49 poorest nations by 2015. Through enhanced financing, improved policy and better service delivery they aimed to radically improve women’s and children’s health.

A total of $40 billion was committed by multiple stakeholders, with World Vision pledging to provide $1.5 billion of support over the next three years. World Vision has reported on this commitment in its high level assessment report.  

World Vision’s role

As part of World Vision’s work though our programmes we seek to build capacity of communities and cultures through an enhancement of community systems that helps empower individual citizens to keep their government and health services providers accountable.  It is World Vision’s main approach to local level advocacy. (See page 26 of the report.) 

The report highlights one such example in our Citizen Voice in Action (CVA) initiative that is currently active in 26 countries. (See page 63: Giving children and communities a voice – social accountability in action.) It focuses on Uganda where CVA is used to monitor health clinics in 20 districts across the country. Members of the public are encouraged to record their most pressing health needs on a scorecard – a method that has led to improvements in the delivery and quality of healthcare.

World Vision’s local level advocacy work extends beyond this with further examples in the report on linking grassroots voices to national policy engagements through the Child Health Now campaign in Uganda over issues of maternal and child health. (See page 54 of the report.) 

The report comes at a time of intense activity in New York, with the UN sitting down for its 67th session and many countries and stakeholders (like World Vision) ensuring the good momentum that this report chronicles is carried forward – keep an eye out for more updates this week.