24th August, 2017
President Mulatu Teshome of Ethiopia on Thursday underlined the need to employ joint efforts, commitment, clear directions and effective investment towards ending preventable maternal and child deaths in Africa.
Teshome made the call at the opening of a two-day health conference tittled: “overcoming critical barriers to maternal and child survival” in Addis Ababa.
Participants at the conference will share the best practices, lessons learned, and challenges while celebrating the progress to date.
He stated that extraordinary progress has been achieved over the past five decades in ensuring healthy lives for children, as child mortality rates around the world have been cut in half.
Recognising the achievements in the past few decades, the President called for strengthened efforts to address the challenges of maternal and child health, which he said are especially prevalent in developing countries, with significant discrepancies even within countries.
Particpants wil also deliberates on ways of reaching the 2030 targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as it relates to the Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health.
Globally 303,000 mothers and 5.9 million children die each other.
This includes the 2.6 million newborns who die in their first month and almost one million on their first day of life.
Approximately, 2.4 million maternal, perinatal, neonatal, and child deaths would be averted annually if the complete package of evidence-based interventions that can be provided at the community level reached all who need them.