WEDNESDAY, Sept. 26 (HealthDay News) -- Declining donor funding
is one of the reasons most of the world will not meet the United
Nations' Millennium Development Goals for women's and children's
health by 2015, according to a new report.
The Millennium Development Goals were established in an effort
to solve such global problems as poverty, hunger, gender
inequality, HIV/AIDS, and maternal and child health.
Although some countries have achieved notable reductions in
mother and child deaths during the past decade, millions of women
and children still die every year from preventable causes, noted
the authors of the report in a news release from
The Lancet.
Those causes need to be dealt with more urgently worldwide and
in certain countries, according to the first report from the U.N.
Secretary-General's independent Expert Review Group on Information
and Accountability for Women's and Children's Health.
The report noted that declining rates of donor funding and a
failure to direct resources to the countries with the greatest need
could have devastating consequences for millions of women and
children worldwide.
The report was scheduled for presentation Wednesday at the U.N.
General Assembly in New York City.
The major preventable and neglected causes of death among
children are increasingly occurring among newborns (3.1 million
deaths). A large number of preventable deaths also occur during the
post-neonatal period (from one month to one year after birth), with
1.1 million deaths from pneumonia, 750,000 deaths from diarrhea and
560,000 deaths from malaria.
The decline in death rates among women falls well short of the
goal for 2015. The situation among adolescent girls is especially
serious. Girls aged 15 to 19 account for one in eight births in
low-income settings. Girls in that same age group account for a
quarter of unsafe abortions in sub-Saharan Africa, the findings
showed.
The report also found that the world's highest death rates among
women and children are in sub-Saharan Africa.
The report makes many recommendations to improve worldwide
progress on women's and children's health, including:
- Strengthening the ties between countries, donors, health
professionals, researchers, foundations and the private
sector.
- Establishing a framework to guide investments in women's and
children's health.
- Setting clearer priorities for implementing the Millennium
Development Goals in each country.
- Increasing the evaluation and implementation of technology used
to make health decisions.
- Strengthening human-rights frameworks in participating
countries.
- Improving evaluation and accountability.
More information
The World Health Organization has more about the
Millennium Development Goals.