By Raquel Thompson
15 June 2009 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: With less than six years remaining to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the United Nations is regrouping and reenergizing efforts to address the most laggard of all MDGs: maternal health.
Failing to do so would not only allow millions of lives to continue to perish during childbirth, but would also slow development on almost every other front, from education to employment and food security, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today.
Adopted alongside two other health-related Millennium Development Goals during the UN Millennium Summit in 2000, MDG 5 has the ambitious aim of reducing maternal mortality by three-fourths between 1990 and 2015. It also aspires to achieve universal access to reproductive health.
“This is the slowest moving target indicator amongst the eight Millennium Development Goals,” Ban said addressing a distinguished group of delegates during a luncheon event organized to emphasize the Health MDGs. “But it can be solved, it can be the fastest moving indicator if we are united.”
Addressing the gathering, Deputy Secretary-General Asha Rose-Migiro said that renewed effort was vital. “MDG 5 is the mother of all MDGs,” she said. “By caring for mothers, we foster stability and economic growth.” “Women in Africa carry on their heads, or in their arms, two-thirds of all the goods transported around the continent, and they produce 80 percent of Africa’s food. In Southeast Asia, women grow 90 percent of the rice.”
And by raising children all over the world, Migiro said, women are indeed the key to a sustainable future. “Ensuring a woman’s safe pregnancy and childbirth directly improves her baby’s chances of surviving and thriving. That is because mothers feed their children, send them to school, and take them for vaccinations.”
The recent availability of vaccines in the developing world, due to the work of organizations like the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations (GAVI), has helped cut into under 5 child mortality rates, another of the three health-related MDGs.
And the work of organizations like the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria (Global Fund) have helped achieve great strides in the third health MDG, which aims to decrease the spread of these major diseases.
Yet very little has been put in place to directly address the plight of mothers, Migiro said.
“1,400 women still die each day in childbirth in the developing world. Almost all of these deaths could be prevented,” she informed.
A 2005 World Health Organization report confirms that most maternal deaths are emergencies during time of delivery deriving from hemorrhaging, infection, hypertension, or obstructed labor, and indeed could be resolved through basic operations.
Unfortunately, less than 60 percent of all women in developing countries, and only 34 percent in the least developed countries have access to a skilled professional when giving birth.
Migiro said time has come to change this.
“We know what needs to be done,” she explained. “We have seen improvements in countries as diverse as Rwanda, Egypt, and Malaysia. Tunisia reduced its maternal mortality rate by 80 percent with a comprehensive strategy emphasizing skilled attendance at delivery and family planning.”
According to Migiro, one million extra healthcare workers are needed to provide the services necessary to reduce maternal mortality.
The shortcoming in accomplishing MDG 5 comes as no surprise to Jeffrey Sachs, Special Advisor to the Secretary-General on the Millennium Development Goals. In his address during the luncheon, he said the lack of maternal health improvements “is utterly systematic.” Wherever money has been invested, there has been a powerful breakthrough; where the money has not been invested, we have not seen a breakthrough, he explained.
When GAVI and the Global Fund were created, they provided an avenue to funnel health-related development funding; and so, their corresponding health MDGs have seen large achievements, he said. On the other hand, “we have not invested in maternal survival because there is no global fund for maternal survival or for safe childbirth—it doesn’t exist.”
Foreign Minister of Norway, Jonas Gahr Støre, who co-hosted the luncheon with the Secretary-General, told MediaGlobal that Sachs’ analysis was right on target. “The fall in child mortality is going on pretty much throughout because of increased immunizations…most of the GAVI countries, those that receive support from GAVI, have seen progress…the big challenge is maternal health, where there is nearly no change and that’s where we need to focus,” he said.
Støre said Norway plans to address this issue by leading by example. In 2009 and 2010, it plans to exceed its already aggressive Official Development Assistance (ODA) target of one percent of GNI, and channel the funds toward the laggard MDG.
During today’s luncheon, Støre launched a report which specifically calls on other donor countries to also hit their previously agreed upon ODA targets, and on developing countries to maintain their investment in health and health budgets, despite the current economic crisis.
Støre said he trusts the report will be useful because it is “not lofty words. They are very concrete examples of how we can do it.” In the report, eight countries from the developing world and eight donor countries outline exactly how they plan to maintain their commitment to financing health throughout the current turbulent financial times.
Sachs endorsed the Norwegian initiative. “We need systems, we need personnel, we need training, we need logistics, we need medicines, we need equipment –but all of that requires basic financing,” he said.
Sachs indicated that the international community was “$21 billion behind annual rent to meet the millennium goals in health.” This is money already promised by donor countries, but yet to be allocated.
“And I can tell you,” Sachs concluded, “that without that financing coming in and a window to access it, we will not achieve the goals… [But] if we follow through on the financial commitments, all of the MDGs, including three-fourths reduction in maternal mortality, can be achieved by the year 2015.”