LOCATION Dar es Salaam

SPEAKER British High Commissioner Diane Corner

EVENT Launch of the 2009 Popular Tribunal event on Maternal Morbidity and Mortality (MMM).

DATE 06/10/2009

I'm honoured to have been invited to be the chief walker today in Dar es Salaam at the launch of the 2009 Popular Tribunal event on Maternal Morbidity and Mortality (MMM).

Pregnancy and childbirth are usually times of joy for parents and families. I know because I speak as the mother of four children. But I was lucky - I had my children, four daughters, in Britain. In many countries, pregnancy and childbirth is a time of great risk to the health and survival of women and newborn babies.

According to UNICEF, around 1,500 women die every day from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth. Not much has changed since world leaders vowed in the year 2000 to reduce the rate of maternal mortality by three quarters, as one of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) with a deadline of 2015.
 
Ninety-nine percent of maternal deaths occur in poor countries. The latest UN progress report on the MDGs concludes that giving birth safely is still a “privilege of the rich”: In sub-Saharan Africa, and this includes Tanzania, almost five percent of women will die from causes related to pregnancy and childbirth during their lifetime.

Most maternal deaths are a result of unsafe abortions or complications during delivery, like haemorrhage, infections, or obstructed labour. Such conditions are often preventable. But in poor countries, such as Tanzania, fewer than half of pregnant women have access to adequate prenatal care.

Despite some progress in countries like Tanzania over the last 15 years on the availability of doctors, nurses or midwives to attend deliveries, more than half of all births in southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa still take place without the assistance of trained personnel.

Ban Ki-moon, United Nations Secretary-General has said that: “The cause of maternal health has been one of my top priorities of public global health as Secretary-General of the United Nations. Unfortunately, this is the slowest-moving target on the millennium development goals. Even at this time, a woman dies every minute in the course of pregnancy and delivering baby. This is just unacceptable situation in 21st century. We must stop this situation.”

Study after study has shown that investing in women brings broad economic and social benefits. Devoting resources to women's health in particular is one of the smartest investments any society can make. When women are healthy, they provide for their families. They contribute to their communities. A health system that delivers for women when women are ready to deliver is a strong health system that will benefit all people.

The best way to provide for this is to strengthen a country’s health system so that it can deliver high-quality care, ideally free at the point of use for women and children. The Taskforce on Innovative International Financing for Health Systems was launched in September 2008 to help strengthen health systems in the 49 poorest countries in the world, including Tanzania. Chaired by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and World Bank President Robert Zoellick, the Taskforce has identified a range of mechanisms to help bridge the financing gaps which are hindering the attainment of the health-related Millennium Development Goals.

On 23 September in New York, at the United Nations General Assembly, Gordon Brown and Robert Zoellick co-hosted an event on "Sharing our common future: healthy women and healthy children". This was co-sponsored by the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health.  Around 300 high-level participants attended, including His Excellency President Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete and Tanzanian Health Minister Hon Professor David Mwakyusa.

The event resulted in an unprecedented array of commitments to save the lives of mothers and children in developing countries and to achieve the MDGs 4 and 5. The outcomes included:

• the generation of US$5.3 billion in additional resources via donor contributions from the Taskforce for Innovative Financing for Health Systems' recommendations. 
• developing country announcements on the provision of free healthcare for women and children.

The leaders present at that meeting also committed themselves to a global "Consensus for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health" presented by WHO Director General, Dr Margaret Chan.

Speaking about the Consensus, Gordon Brown said that: "During the 1980s, bad development advice led countries to charge fees for health services that became a death sentence. Today is the time to pledge to end this shame. The Consensus on MNCH, endorsed by the G8, is the first global plan for free health services. Today, I want to call on every country in the developed world to support developing countries in this effort."

At the meeting on 23 September, the UK pledged a further $400 million to help struggling health systems through the International Financial Facility for Immunisation. The UK's Department for International Development has committed to spend almost $10 billion on health programmes between 2008 and 2015, which will be used to help support the transition to free health services.

I'd like to conclude by quoting again from United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon: "It is said that a society can be judged by how it treats women and children. Just as no woman should die needlessly in childbirth, no person of conscience should stand by as such senseless deaths continue. Each of us can make a difference. Together, we can improve the health and well-being of women and children. When they thrive, so will our world.”

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