{"id":6875,"date":"2019-11-29T08:52:38","date_gmt":"2019-11-29T05:52:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=6875"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:30:43","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:30:43","slug":"how-better-information-will-reduce-maternal-and-child-deaths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2019\/11\/29\/how-better-information-will-reduce-maternal-and-child-deaths\/","title":{"rendered":"How Better Information Will Reduce Maternal And Child Deaths"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>By Cheikh Mbacke Faye<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>At least\ntwo-thirds of all annual maternal and child deaths worldwide occur in\nsub-Saharan Africa. Despite recent improvements, significant inequities persist\nacross countries and regions and within countries. An initiative by the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/aphrc.org\/\">African Population and Health Research Centre<\/a>,&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/countdown2030.org\/\">Countdown to 2030<\/a>, seeks to accelerate\ncoverage and access to reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, and adolescents\u2019\nhealth and nutrition services by providing evidence that informs decision\nmaking for policy, programming and financing. Cheikh Mbacke Faye explains.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Why the focus on maternal and child health?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There has been\nsubstantial progress in reducing maternal and child deaths globally. This is\ndue to increased investment in good infrastructure, the use of vaccines and\nother factors. Between 1990 and 2015, maternal and under-five mortality&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/data.unicef.org\/resources\/trends-maternal-mortality-2000-2017\/\">declined<\/a>&nbsp;by\n44% and 58% respectively globally. But maternal mortality remains unacceptably\nhigh, especially in developing countries. At least&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/data.unicef.org\/topic\/maternal-health\/maternal-mortality\/\">two-thirds\nof all annual maternal and child deaths worldwide<\/a>&nbsp;occur in sub-Saharan\nAfrica.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>How does the Countdown 2030 initiative hope to change this?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This initiative aims\nto equip country health data experts to provide deep analyses of inequalities\nfrom existing data sources such as the District Health Information System and\nthe Demographic Health Surveys. Evidence like this should help improve equity in\nmaternal and child health as&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.who.int\/sdg\/targets\/en\/\">stipulated<\/a>&nbsp;in\nthe Sustainable Development Goals. The overall aim is to reach all populations\nwith essential health services of good quality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The analysis aims to\nshow the inequities by sub-national level, socioeconomic status and the\nrural-urban divide. When governments have evidence, they are better placed to\ndevelop policies and programmes that provide equitable coverage of effective\nhealth interventions for women, children and adolescents. The project is\nanchored on the use of evidence to promote increased coverage and access to\nreproductive, maternal, newborn, child, and adolescents\u2019 health and nutrition\nservices to all people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For example, in\nUganda, working with Makerere University School of Public Health, we did an\nanalysis to understand the rate of under-five mortality in different regions of\nUganda. The analysis identified the six regions in Uganda with the highest\nchild mortality rates. This evidence was shared at a meeting in Kampala with\nstakeholders in government and civil society organisations to facilitate a\ndiscussion of health system challenges in these regions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/how-better-information-will-reduce-maternal-and-child-deaths-124440\">Read\nmore\u2026<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Cheikh Mbacke Faye At least two-thirds of all annual maternal and child deaths worldwide occur in sub-Saharan Africa. Despite recent improvements, significant inequities persist across countries and regions and&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6876,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6875\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}