PHA-Exchange> Article: The coming decade for global action on child health

[Claudio]

From: Ghassan 

The coming decade for global action on child health by Richard Horton  who wrote another children focused article at the Lancet: "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 appallingly 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 governments and even international agencies. Children were invisible. 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 succeeded. This work was followed by a similar concerted effort on newborn survival.The findings of both initiatives were later refined 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 mechanism to improve accountability, re-energise commitment, and recognise 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 identified. 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
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