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Make Every Mother and Child Count: World Health Day 2005 Highlights

Every minute of every day, a woman dies from complications of pregnancy and childbirth and 20 children under the age of five years die, mainly in developing countries; the poorest women and children face the highest risk of death.

Ottawa, Ontario – April 7 2005 – On World Health Day, Action Canada for Population and Development (ACPD), the Canadian Society for International Health (CSIH), CARE Canada, Planned Parenthood Federation of Canada (PPFC) and the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (SOGC) host the Canadian launch of the World Health Report 2005. The newsmaker breakfast features Canadian Minister of International Cooperation, Aileen Carroll; Senator Lucie Pépin; and Professor Florence Mirembe, Head of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the Mulago Hospital and Faculty of Medicine, Makerere University, in Uganda as keynote speakers.

According to the World Health Report 2005 – Make Every Mother and Child Count, over half a million women die every year from pregnancy or childbirth, more than more 11 million children die before their fifth birthday - and 4 million of these are newborns. Virtually all – 99% of these – occur in developing countries.

Health is a right. The Millennium Development Goals reaffirmed that right and provided targets for achieving it. The 2005 report reviews the obstacles women and young children face in fulfilling their right to health. It pays particular attention to newborns, whose needs have “fallen between the cracks”. The report also focuses on countries where progress in maternal and child health is slow, stagnant or reversing, where less then half of mothers and newborns receive health care, and even those not the full range.

Professor Mirembe says, “Investment in maternal and child health is a prerequisite for sustainable development. For the past two decades, global efforts have been made to improve the health of babies and mothers. But in the developing word - there has been little or no success ”. This has huge ramifications on families and societies.

" To reduce maternal mortality every women needs easy access to the contraceptive of her choice, and safe and legal abortion. Unsafe abortion kills and disables hundreds of thousands of women each year”, says Linda Capperauld, Executive Director of Planned Parenthood Federation of Canada.

“We know how to prevent child deaths – have done so here and in many countries,” says Michelle Munro of CARE Canada. “But the numbers are testimony that we are not. The real tragedy is newborns. While we have scored successes in delivering life saving health care to under fives, neonates are not reached by either maternal or child health programmes. They die needlessly. And we have the knowledge and tools to stop this – we just need the wherewithal to make them work.”

“The global community must work together to strengthen and support the efforts of national and local health systems to provide essential quality health services if we want to improve the lives of women and children. This means improving political will, human resource capacity, infrastructure, communication, and monitoring, while focusing on holistic approaches that balance prevention and treatment,’ says Janet Hatcher Roberts, Executive Director of the Canadian Society for International Health.

Katherine McDonald, Executive Director of Action Canada for Population and Development, says “Ten years ago, in Cairo at the International Conference on Population and Development, and a year later at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, governments, including Canada, agreed on concrete steps to realize women’s rights to make decisions concerning sexuality and reproduction. They agreed that women must be able to decide when and if they want to be sexually active, and to decide when and if they want to have children. If these choices can be guaranteed by governments, then other choices concerning education and employment can be fulfilled.”

Dr. André B. Lalonde, of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada and a leader in promoting safe motherhood and newborn health, states, “Canada has the reputation, credibility, political clout, knowledge and expertise to push this agenda forward. We must increase Canada's financial commitments to the Official Development Assistance program and ensure there is appropriate investment in sexual and reproductive health initiatives to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.”

Governments, including Canada, have a unique opportunity this year to achieve the international targets of reducing maternal and child mortality, HIV/AIDS and achieving gender equality, which are part of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), that were established in 2000 and to be reaffirmed in September at the MDG five-year review. In addition, governments need to positively answer WHO’s call to the global community to use the knowledge and skills we already have to transform knowledge into action.

NOTE: The Canadian Newsmaker Breakfast was Web cast, please listen at: http://www.newswire.ca/en/webcast/viewEvent.cgi?eventID=1066120. For further information about WHO and World Health Day: www.acpd.ca; www.csih.org; www.care.ca; www.ppfc.ca; www.sogc.org

About the SOGC

Founded in 1944, the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada is comprised of over 2,700 professional members, including gynaecologists, obstetricians, family physicians, nurses, midwives and allied health professionals. A leading authority on reproductive health care, the SOGC produces national guidelines for both public and medical education on important women's health issues. The Society's mission is to promote optimal women's health through leadership, collaboration, education, research and advocacy in the practice of obstetrics and gynaecology.

Last Updated April 19, 2007