Looking forward to Post 2015 Health Agenda

Three international events, all interrelated, are worth revisiting as they are all part of the post 2015 health agenda which the new Nigerian government should strategically participate in to revamp its  health sector which at the moment is suffering from dwindling financial resources to support and sustain health interventions including vaccine procurement and lifesaving drugs.In […]

Three international events, all interrelated, are worth revisiting as they are all part of the post 2015 health agenda which the new Nigerian government should strategically participate in to revamp its  health sector which at the moment is suffering from dwindling financial resources to support and sustain health interventions including vaccine procurement and lifesaving drugs.
In Greentree, Long Island, 14th -15th May 2015, the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon launched the new Every Woman Every Child campaign at senior leaders retreat. He hosted a high-level Every Woman Every Child luncheon to help galvanize support and action for the updated Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health. Moderated by Ms. Juju Chang, ABC News, the luncheon was attended by over 100 senior leaders from a variety of sectors, including governments, UN agencies, private sector and civil society.
In his opening remarks, the UN Secretary-General highlighted the remarkable progress that had been made for women’s and children’s health under the Millennium Development Goals, especially since the launch of the Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health in 2010. He further emphasized that this progress is fragile and much work under the health MDGs remains unfinished, which is why the updated Global Strategy is so important.
In his call to action, the UN Secretary-General stated: “Today, I would like to call on all of you, new and existing Every Woman Every Child partners, to help mobilize innovative new commitments around the updated Global Strategy.”
During the meeting Ms. Graça Machel, Board Chair of the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health and a tireless champion for health and rights of women and girls, provided closing remarks. In her speech, she issued a clarion call for everyone in the room to step up and support the updated Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health.  “If we invest in the potential of women, children and adolescents over the next 15 years, we can end all preventable deaths of women and children in a generation,” Ms. Machel said.
At the event, Every Woman Every Child also launched a new digital media campaign – Every Woman Every Child is Me.
Another event worth reporting was the Consultation for the UN Secretary-General’s Global Strategy on Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health that took place 6-7 May, 2015 in Johannesburg, South Africa. At that meeting the African Public Health Leaders united to end preventable deaths and improve health of women, children and adolescents by 2030
In a press release circulated at the end of the meeting, “hundreds of leaders and public health experts from across Africa gathered to identify game-changing interventions to accelerate progress towards improving the lives of millions of women, children and adolescents. This consultation will provide a roadmap – an updated global strategy for Women’s, Children’s, and Adolescents’ Health – to end preventable deaths of women, newborns, children and adolescents by 2030, which will be launched alongside the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in September. This revised strategy will build on the Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health, launched in 2010 by the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General.”
Despite immense progress, the scale of the problem remains vast; as of 2013, 17,000 children under the age of five still died every day.
Moreover, approximately 225 million women who want to prevent or delay pregnancy are not using modern contraceptives and each hour, 33 women die from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. Over half of maternal deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa alone. To reach the global goals for women’s and children’s health by 2030, it is estimated that an additional US$5.24 is needed per person per year.
Calls for increased funding stress the need for investments to be predictable and sustainable, as well as increasingly efficient.
This meeting – co-hosted by the South African National Department of Health and the UN Secretary-General’s Every Woman Every Child movement, with support from PMNCH and the World Health Organization (WHO), is part of a broad consultative process to update the original global strategy.
The 3rd event was the global citizen dialogue that took place at the 68th World Health Assembly on 22nd May 2015 in Geneva. “This is historic!” declared Richard Horton (Lancet Editor and iERG co-chair) yesterday as he opened the first ever dialogue to be held between citizens and governments at the World Health Assembly in Geneva.
It was a standing room only as delegates flooded into the Palais de Nations conference room to hear citizens share their experiences and make recommendations to their governments on how to improve reproductive, maternal, newborn and adolescent health.” Government Ministers and representatives were also there to respond, most notably from Sweden, Canada, Indonesia, Namibia and Mali, as well as high level UN delegates.
Flavia Bustreo, Assistant Director General at WHO, also voiced her strong support for increased social accountability. Citizen Representatives from Indonesia and Tanzania moved and inspired the audience as they described how tens of thousands of people have taken part in citizens’ hearings at community, district and national levels in some 30 countries so far – and how they hope their recommendations will be included in the updated global strategy.
All comments to Dr Aminu Magashi Publisher Health Reporters ([email protected])