Pak to attend global child survival summit in India

Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, August 24

Pakistan has confirmed its participation in the Global Call to Action Summit on Maternal and Child Survival to be hosted by India in New Delhi on August 27 and 28.

The summit, to be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, will witness the participation of health ministers and delegations from 24 countries which make up the maximum burden of global mother and child mortality and morbidity. Among them are South Asian and African nations.

Sources in the Health Ministry today said an official delegation from Pakistan would attend the summit whose earlier two versions were held in the US. This is the first time the summit is being hosted outside the US.

For India, the summit will be an occasion to project itself as the leader in child and maternal survival considering it has fared better than the global average reductions on both parameters since 1990 when the world adopted Millennium Development Goals to reduce the mortality.

In 1990, India’s under-five mortality rate stood at 126 while the global average was 90. In 2013, India achieved an accelerated decline in its under-five mortality that dropped to 49 against a global average of 46.

The annual rate of decline from 2008 to 13 has been 6.6 per cent, indicating that India is closer to achieving its under-five mortality MDG target, if the current trend of decline continues. Similarly, India has been able to cut down its maternal mortality ratio from 560 in 1990 to 167 in 2013, which is much faster than the global averages of 310 in 1990 and 210 in 2013.

“We are confident of achieving the MMR Millennium Development Target of 140 by the September 2015 deadline,” Rakesh Kumar, Joint Secretary Health said.

He said the summit would ensure a wide exposure of Indian policy planners to international best practices in the sector after which the Ministry of Health would be willing to tweak its programmes for better outcomes.

Around 50 best practices will be showcased at the pavilion to be erected during the two-day brainstorming session. From India, the centre pieces of exhibition will be polio eradication, Indradhanush programme which has succeeded in raising the annual vaccination rates by 5 percentage points as against one in the past; skill labs being used to train nurses and auxiliary nurses and midwives and IT innovation Swasthya Slate which is helping ASHA workers to collate health information from across India.

Ghana, Yemen, Rwanda and South Sudan have said they will be unable to participate in the summit being co-hosted by the Health Ministry of Ethiopia.