Geneva, Switzerland
Remarks as Prepared
Let me start by thanking the PMNCH Secretariat – Executive Director Helga Fogstad and her team – for their dedicated efforts in supporting the Partnership’s joint advocacy for the survival, health, and well-being of women, children, and adolescents everywhere.
We greatly appreciate all your efforts in organizing this particular “Lives in the Balance” dialogue focused on the urgent need to accelerate progress on maternal, newborn, and child survival health. I want to also thank all the distinguished speakers with whom I am honored to share this platform.
A mother’s chance of surviving childbirth or a child’s chance at celebrating their fifth birthday should not be determined by where they live or are born, or their race or ethnicity, or their family’s income status.
And although many would consider the substantial global progress made on maternal and child mortality a global health success story—improving the survival and health of women, newborns, and children worldwide remains an urgent global challenge and a priority for the U.S. Government.
The truth is even before the pandemic progress on maternal and child survival was showing signs of slowing. But the pandemic revealed weaknesses in health systems around the world and has had a devastating impact. It disrupted and diverted resources from essential health services—the very ones that serve women, children, and families.
At USAID, we have recognized that our strategy for preventing child and maternal deaths had to change because of what we’ve experienced in the pandemic and where the world is today.
USAID’s new Framework for Preventing Child and Maternal Deaths is a strategic approach that seeks to measurably improve health outcomes for women and children through an intensified focus on coverage, quality, and equity.
Under this new framework, USAID’s maternal and child survival programs will focus on bringing critical primary health services—in both public and private facilities—closer to the communities and families who need them. We know that health systems anchored in integrated primary health care are associated with better health outcomes, improved equity, and better cost efficiency.
Further, when primary health systems can deliver comprehensive care through smartly integrated services, providers can optimize each engagement with the health system and reduce critical missed opportunities for care.
For example, at USAID-supported primary health centers, new mothers can receive counseling about prenatal care, optimal breastfeeding practices and family planning options, while their newborns receive their first doses of lifesaving vaccines. At these same appointments, families can pick up insecticide-treated bed nets to protect themselves from malaria, or have their young children treated for common childhood illnesses, like diarrhea and pneumonia.
As we expand coverage of lifesaving health services, USAID also recognizes that we must do more to reach the communities that have historically not been reached. Here, USAID is focusing on our network of local partners to understand who these communities are, what they need, and how we can best support them.
For example, in India, USAID’s model of bringing NGOs together with state and local health authorities to extend the reach of government health services is now being applied to catch up on routine immunization country-wide.
By holding community meetings, working through local advocates, and conducting vaccination events, families are reached through a variety of familiar and trusted platforms to increase demand for childhood immunizations, including those that protect against life threatening diseases like measles and polio.
Moreover, care must be of high quality. This means that providers accurately diagnose conditions, treat those conditions quickly, and instill a culture where patients are treated with kindness, respect, and dignity.
In Indonesia, USAID is partnering with the Ministry of Health to develop and implement a model for labor and delivery rooms using standard operating protocols and tools such as checklists and audit forms, in combination with regular quality improvement committee meetings, to identify and resolve issues that measurably improve the quality of care around birth.
As USAID Administrator Samantha Power has underscored, “We have everything we need to end preventable maternal and child mortality in a generation, we just have to get to work together.” Together, by creating a more cohesive, country-led community of aligned donors, practitioners, policymakers, and advocates; we are now better positioned to break down barriers and broaden equitable coverage and access to the proven high quality interventions that we know save lives. Thank you all for joining in this vital work.