In a Comment in this week's Women Deliver Special Edition of The Lancet, Editor Dr Richard Horton discusses the 10 reasons why he believes women and children remain invisible, despite more than two decades elapsing since the Safe Motherhood Initiative and exactly 20 years passing since the UN Conventions on the Rights of the Child.
Dr Horton says the global health community needs to listen harder to the voices from countries where most maternal and child deaths take place. He says: "Too often, we ignore these voices. If we listened, we would hear pleas to help strengthen primary health care systems, especially in rural areas. We would hear a call for greater attention to newborns. We would hear about the importance of education and social protection. We would hear about the need for higher quality medicines and supplies. We would hear more about the political status of women. We would hear about the need for safer abortion services."
He adds that to make progress, funders need to focus on expanding research, measurement, and analytic capacities in countries. Global reports are frequently submitted to The Lancet, but good quality countries studies are much harder to come by.
Finally, Dr Horton calls for the maternal and child health community to professionalise their advocacy, concluding: "Despite the wealth of data available, advocates have failed to give decision makers clear 'asks', with costed returns on investment, scenario options, and evaluation programmes and platforms to monitor the performance of investments. Without these details, advocacy groups are inviting donors to gamble on a hope and a promise. In 2010, that kind of well-intentioned request is simply not good enough."
Lancet Press Office T) +44 (0) 20 7424 4949 E) tony.kirby@lancet.com
For full Comment see: http://press.thelancet.com/wdrh.pdf
For full Viewpoint see: http://press.thelancet.com/viewpointwd.pdf
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