The coming decade for global action on child health
---------------------------------------------------
"The coming decade for global action on child health" by Richard
Horton, who wrote another children focused article at the Lan-
cet: "putting children at the centre" and I believe that all of
us call for more efforts to make every mother and child count.
"A new year brings new leadership to tackle the still appall-
ingly high and largely preventable toll of child, newborn, and
maternal deaths worldwide. Dr Francisco Songane, an obstetrician
and former minister of health in Mozambique, has been appointed
to head the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health.
At the Countdown to 2015 conference on Tracking Progress in
Child Survival, held in London last month, Songane set out a
compelling vision to intensify and harmonise national, regional
and global action for children. His plan focuses on meeting two
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). MDG-4 calls for a reduction
in under-5-mortality rates by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015.
MDG-5 calls for a reduction in maternal mortality by three-
quarters during the same period. These goals are tough but
achievable.
The Countdown conference arose out of a belief that children had
fallen off the political agenda of international health. Over 10
million under-5 deaths had been ignored for far too long by gov-
ernments and even international agencies. Children were invisi-
ble. Lacking votes, they had become marginal to the mainstream
of political debate about human development. Three years ago, a
group of concerned child health experts proposed not only to
synthesise knowledge about child survival but also to catapult
the child back onto the policy map of global health. They suc-
ceeded. This work was followed by a similar concerted effort on
newborn survival.The findings of both initiatives were later re-
fined and costed. The results of intervention programmes began
to be translated into practical policies.
The final paper of the first Lancet series called for a mecha-
nism to improve accountability, re-energise commitment, and rec-
ognise successes in child survival. To these ends, rotating 2-
yearly conferences were proposed. The aim of the first of these
Countdown meetings was to present coverage data on 19 indicators
of progress towards MDG-4 . These indicators were grouped into
five themes: nutrition, vaccination, other preventive measures,
newborn health, and case management. 60 priority countries that
had the highest rates or numbers of under-5 mortality were iden-
tified. These 60 countries included over 90% of all deaths among
children in the world today."
Free full text of the article: The Lancet 2006; 367:3-5 at:
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673606678999/fulltext