VIDEO: Women and children's health - UN Population Fund

UNFPA - UNTV: United Nations, New York - With just five years left to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the United Nations (UN) calls for world leaders to intensify their efforts to improve women's and children's health; and with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's launch of the Global Strategy for Women's and Children's Health, UN Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro, head of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) Thoraya Obaid and Millennium Development Goals Advocate Jeffrey Sachs talk about the need to scale-up efforts to reduce child mortality and improve maternal health.

Out of the eight MDGs, the two goals focusing on reducing child mortality and improving maternal health are identified as having the least progress with around eight million children dying of preventable causes and more than 350,000 women dying from preventable complications related to pregnancy and childbirth.

UN Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro talks about the lack of “resource allocation,” needed to scale up efforts to promote these goals.

She adds that “in many communities where women are disempowered” investments in “areas that really affect them has not been given that much importance.”

Thoraya Obaid, who works to promote reproductive health, gender equality and safe motherhood as the head of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), says that one of the biggest challenges lies on the mindsets of people.

With opposition to reproductive health “focused on whether women are of value or not,” she adds that it is important to engage men, world, religious and community leaders as well as the civil society “so that together we can see that women are critical to the well being of the family, the community and therefore investing in women is smart economics.”

Economist Jeffrey Sachs, a UN MDG Advocate and a former Special Advisor, talks about the discrepancies in the gains achieved so far.

He says that unlike the “targeted investments” in preventing and treating AIDS, TB, malaria as well as general immunization, there has been no focused financing effort made for maternal health.

He suggests that “what is needed now is for the donor partners is to pull their resources” and open “a new financing window for maternal health and infant survival” within the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria which reported in 2007 that more than 1.8 million lives had been saved as a result of its supported programmes worldwide.

UNFPA's Obaid says that it's not “all dark and gloomy” and that there “has been some achievement.”

She adds that “the achievements are not sufficient” and maternal health needs to be “the highest priority in national policies.”