SOURCE: All Africa
The world will have to prioritise the health and wellbeing of women and children if it is to meet Sustainable Development Goals, the wife of one of the world's richest men has advised.

Speaking at the Global Maternal and Newborn Health Conference (Global MNHC) in Mexico recently, Ms Melinda Gates, from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, said that newborns had been the forgotten community of the development agenda.

"For all the headway we have made on so many fronts, the hard truth is that progress on newborn health has lagged behind," Ms Gates said.
The Global MNHC offers the first opportunity for policymakers, researchers, advocates, health experts and communities from over 75 countries to discuss evidence-based actions needed to achieve Sustainable Development Goals. It also targets development of a global strategy for women's, children's and adolescents' health and reduction of maternal and newborn deaths.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation invests $130 million annually in maternal and newborn health. Mexico, the host country for the conference, is credited for pioneering successful policies and programmes to improve maternal and newborn health. Globally, the fertility rate has come down to 2.5 children per woman, while nine out of ten girls attend primary school and life expectancy has increased to 71.

Ms Gates noted that the health of newborns was intertwined with the wellbeing of their mothers and the two could not be separated. In particular, Uganda's maternal mortality ratio has decreased from 780 deaths per100,000 live births to 360 deaths per 100,000 live births, although Uganda did not reach MDG 5 of 200 deaths per 100,000 live births, according to the Gates Foundation statistics.

Under-five mortality rate decreased from 187 deaths per 1,000 live births to 55 deaths per 1,000 live births, reaching MDG 4 target of 62 deaths per 1,000 live births. However, this is not enough.

The aim of SGD 3 is to reduce newborn mortality to at least 12 per 1,000 live births, under-five mortality to at least 25 per 1,000 live births; and maternal mortality to less than 70 per 100,000 live births by 2030.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has invested in building maternal homes across Africa so that as their due date nears, women are accommodated here. This eliminates the first delay that often puts millions of women's lives in danger, the delay to reach a health centre.

While at maternal homes, pregnant mothers can learn about the benefits of eating well, breastfeeding, family planning, personal hygiene, and immunization.

The foundation also rallies governments around the world to increase their budgets to family planning. At the 2012 London conference on family planning, President Yoweri Museveni pledged to provide $5 million every year for five years for buying contraceptives and providing them to women who need them. Ms Gates says research has proved that helping a woman plan and space her pregnancies is the most effective way to save mothers and newborns.

EMPOWERING GIRLS

"It doesn't end there. If women space their pregnancies, they are more likely to have healthy babies. If their babies are healthy, they are more likely to flourish as children.When health improves, life improves by every measure. Better health leads to better education, which leads to better economic opportunities, which lead to broader prosperity for communities and countries," she said.

A mobile phone-based national health survey in Uganda, supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, revealed that young people weren't using family planning services. With this evidence, government is now prioritising young people in Uganda's national family planning strategy.

Dr Babatunde Osotimehin, the executive director of the United Nations Population Fund, noted that the discussions and decision made about adolescent girl will help in achieving SDGs because she is the entry point to the success the world is going to have. He argued that a girl who goes to school and stays there doesn't get pregnant, especially if she uses contraception.

He warned that the ability of a woman to decide what to do with her body should not be the decision of any man.

"Why should he tell her when to or when not to have children?" Osotimehin said. "Why should we, in 2015, be dealing with the maternal mortality? If we can empower women to make their own decisions, we will achieve a lot in human development. The 225 million women in the world who want FP [family planning] must now get it," Osotimehin said.