22 nations vow to fight child-maternal deaths

Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, August 28

Twenty-two countries, including India, which contribute 70 per cent of the world’s child and maternal mortality burden, today adopted the Delhi Declaration to end preventable deaths and commit resources for making progress on the post 2015 global health agenda.

The declaration, signed on India’s behalf by Health Minister JP Nadda, was adopted at the end of the two-day Global Call to Action Summit to end preventable child and maternal deaths. This was the first time the summit had been hosted outside the US and in India. This was the third such global summit which brought world leaders in health under one platform to discuss strategies and innovations needed to defeat diseases and avert preventable deaths. Health ministers of the participating nations finalised the declaration today.

The declaration acknowledges the need to improve health delivery access for women, children and adolescents and says the high-burden nations commit to making measurable improvements in reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health through respective country health plans.

The pillars of the declaration are “survival” by ending preventable mortality from infectious and non-communicable diseases; “thriving” by ending malnutrition and addressing nutritional needs of adolescent girls, pregnant and lactating women, and children; and “transforming” by creating an enabling environment to foster gender equality.

“To these ends, we commit to mobilise the increased resources needed to accelerate our progress and support the implementation of the post 2015 development agenda,” reads the Declaration as the world prepares to adopt the post Millennium Development Goals agenda at the September meeting of the UN General Assembly in New York.

At the meeting, the world will make a transition from the MDG (1990 to 2015) period to the Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs) programme until 2030. Seventeen SDGs are being negotiated.

The declaration will put additional pressure of resource allocation on India, considering it contributes 22 per cent of the global under-five child mortality. Out of 6.3 million under-five children who die every year, 1.3 million are Indians. Out of 2.89 lakh maternal deaths annually, 44,000 are in India. The current maternal mortality ratio (deaths per one lakh births) in India is 167. India’s MDG goal on MMR is 140.

Reduced health budgets at home have been a matter of concern for public health workers who have been seeking additional finances.