Unite for Children [Archives:2008/1123/Last Page]
January 24 2008
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primary health care for mothers, newborns and children.
These issues lie at the heart of human progress, serving as sensitive barometers of a country's development and wellbeing and as telling evidence of its priorities and values. Investing in the health of children and their mothers is not only a human rights imperative, it is also a sound economic decision and one of the surest ways for a country to set its course towards a better future.
UNICEF is calling for concerted action to reach the millions of children still excluded from health interventions.
Reducing child mortality requires the achievement of the health-related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
– especially reducing poverty and hunger (MDG 1), improving maternal health (MDG 5), combating HIV and AIDS, malaria and other major diseases (MDG 6) and improving water and sanitation (MDG 7). Attaining
MDG 4 – which requires a two-thirds reduction in the under-five mortality rate between 1990 and 2015 – is still possible, but the challenge is formidable: Reaching the target implies lowering the number of under-five deaths from 9.7 million in 2006 to less than 5 million by 2015.
It is clear that meeting all of these goals will require political will, resources and sound strategies on an unprecedented scale. Much of our efforts will focus on sub-Saharan Africa, which accounts for almost half of all child deaths, and West and Central Africa in particular, where little progress has been made in reducing the aggregate under-five mortality rate since 1990. Attention must also be given to South Asia, which has the second highest number of child deaths, and to countries and communities elsewhere that currently lack essential services.
The lessons learned on child health during recent decades should inform the way forward.
Children 2008 examines these lessons and highlights the most important emerging precepts, including:
– The need to focus on the countries and communities where child mortality rates and levels are highest, and on those that are most at risk of missing out on essential primary health care.
– The merits of packaging essential services together to improve the coverage and efficacy of interventions.
– The vital importance of community partnerships in actively engaging community members as health workers and mobilizing the community in support of improved health practices.
– The imperative of providing a continuum of care across the life cycle, linking households and communities with outreach and extension services and facility-based care.
– The benefits of a strategic, results-oriented approach to health-system development with maternal, newborn and child care as a central part.
– The crucial role of political commitment, national and international leadership and sustained financing in strengthening health systems.
– The necessity for greater harmonization of global health programmes and partnerships.
In order to achieve these objectives the key decision makers – governments and communities, donors and international agencies, non-governmental organizations and private sector collaborators – will need to unite their actions and partnerships in support of maternal and child survival and health. Working together, we can ensure that mothers, newborns and children receive quality essential services, improve their health and nutritional status, and place the survival of children at the heart of global efforts to advance humanity.
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