Thank you for providing me with the opportunity to talk about the G8. My name is Elly Vandenberg, and I am the Director of World Vision Canada's Ottawa Bureau.
Both myself, from World Vision, and my colleague, Teresa Chiesa, from CARE Canada, will be speaking about the G-8 prioritization of maternal newborn and child health. I will draw on best practice evidence and the field experience of NGOs that work alongside communities in developing countries to outline three things: the current crisis facing women and children in developing countries; secondly, the context of this year's G-8 and the potential to address the crisis through the G-8 maternal and children-under-five initiative; and finally, the unique value-added of Canada's contribution.
There's a growing consensus about what is killing women and children in developing countries and what can save lives. There's a unique opportunity for G-8 countries to leverage resources for saving lives and a particular leadership contribution for Canada to make.
First, the current crisis. Many of you are aware of the role of Canada and NGOs at times of a crisis like the earthquake in Haiti, but there's a silent crisis under way, a lack of access to basic, proven health care for the world's most impoverished women and children. You've all heard the haunting statistics. This year, nearly nine million children will die from preventable causes and over 300,000 women will die from causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. You can read the numbers from scientific journals, and I know you've heard the statistics from many different speakers. But what I don't want us to lose sight of is the people these numbers reflect: children who look like babies but are actually stunted four-year-olds affected by malnutrition, or kids dying of illnesses like diarrhea, for which our children might stay home from school for a day or two. The statistics represent mothers who die from bleeding to death in childbirth because they didn't get the kind of birth support you or I or your wives, sisters, or daughters or mothers received. These are the people our organizations see each day in the countries in which we work. Teresa will soon describe more fully the causes and solutions of this silent emergency. I will describe how we can use the G-8 moment and Canada's leadership role specifically to respond and make a difference.
What is it about this year's context that makes it such an important time to make a difference for women and children? This year, 2010, is a landmark year to catalyze progress for maternal and child health and to ensure promises made by global leaders are promises kept. At the UN Millennium Summit in 2000 government leaders came together to commit to the millennium development goals, a set of time-bound objectives aimed at reducing extreme poverty by 2015. You'll hear more about them from my colleague, Robert Fox, from Oxfam. The goals are very interrelated, and we've seen progress on several of them. It is MDG-4 to reduce child poverty and MDG-5 to improve maternal health that are most seriously off track. A consensus for maternal, newborn, and child health has been developing involving donors, developing countries, international bodies, and civil society organizations. The G-8 this year have the unique opportunity to build on this consensus and provide important momentum for the United Nations global action plan to meet the health MDGs at this September's United Nations millennium development goals summit.
Over 18 months ago Canadian child-focused organizations that all support the broad consensus--World Vision, Plan Canada, RESULTS Canada, Save the Children Canada, CARE Canada, and Unicef--came together to explore the specific opportunity provided by the 2010 G-8 summit for making progress on the health-focused MDGs. As organizations that have significant long-term experience working within and beside communities and know first-hand the challenges children and women face as well as the most effective solutions to overcoming them, we decided to join forces to help shape the contribution G-8 countries, including Canada, could make. Our NGO efforts have been focused on Canada's role as G-8 host but have also been global in nature as part of worldwide campaigns to leverage other G-8 and non-G-8 actors to commit to action on these MDGs. It's been very energizing and hopeful to watch the process unfold and to be part of the global consensus building both at home and globally.
We welcome Canada's leadership with the announcement of a G-8 focus on maternal and child health.
What's the unique position of the G-8 to respond to this reality? What should the overall G-8 initiative look like, and in what should the G-8 invest?
Based on our collective programming experience and the most recent best-practice literature, such as The Lancet, we believe that the G-8 can have a catalytic effect on progress for MDGs 4 and 5 by doing the following: investing substantially new money into, one, an integrated basket of proven solutions that, two, support national health plans and, three, strengthen health systems within--four, the kicker--a coordinated and accountable framework. That's what we're calling for.
The chair's summary from the recent development ministers' meeting in Halifax signalled that new money will be pledged and that those core principles will lay the groundwork for the G-8 initiative. What this looks like specifically is investment in the following integrated basket of foreign interventions, things you've probably heard of already: antenatal care; postpartum care; family planning, which includes contraception; reproductive health; treatment and prevention of diseases; prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV; immunizations; and nutrition.
Building upon the Paris and Accra principles of aid effectiveness, the initiative should support national health plans to help ensure that the necessary infrastructure is in place to support an expanded and context-specific basket of interventions.
Strengthening of health systems refers to the fact that better outcomes in maternal, newborn, and child health will depend on women and children benefiting from the full continuum of care, from pregnancy to newborn to child, and from home to clinic to hospital and back again.
Accountability at all levels and improved monitoring and evaluation are critical to the success of the initiative. Globally, countries and regions with the highest levels of child and maternal mortality should be the focus. The G-8 should build on its experience with coordinated action to ensure flexibility for donors. A variety of existing funding mechanisms should be considered for the initiative, including expansion of the existing catalytic initiative approach, direct bilateral support for national health plans, and partnership with multilateral and civil society organizations to address the full continuum of care.
We welcome the recent commitment from Minister Oda to new funding from Canada for the G-8 initiative, which ensures stable funding across all areas of CIDA programming. We will actively follow this promise. We look forward to the June G-8, where we will expect to see clear commitments from each of the G-8 countries, including Canada.
If based on evidence, lessons learned, and CIDA's stated priorities and commitment to delivering focused and effective aid, what should Canada's specific contribution be?
You'll find the details in our coalition brief, but for Canada the focus needs to be on four things: ensuring the presence of a full range of skilled, motivated, and equipped health workers in the right place at the right time, with the necessary infrastructure, drugs, and equipment, and addressing the main causes of maternal, newborn, and child mortality while emphasizing access for the most poor and most vulnerable; an integration of proven high-impact interventions, with the focus on proven interventions, to ensure healthy pregnancy and childbirth; a range of family planning interventions within the larger basket; and finally--Canada's contribution, and the kicker that I talked about--accountability to communities and measuring the results.
We welcome the commitment by G-8 development ministers to more determined political action on aid effectiveness, accountability, coordination, and sustainability.
What does that look like?
Canada has particular experience in drawing upon participatory methodologies that enable men, women, and children to become active participants in their own health care. Accurate and timely information and data, as well as common performance indicators, will be fundamental to support evidence-based decision-making and allow for comparison and standardization of reports and results.
Finally, in conclusion, based on the depth of evidence and the high degree of global agreement on the needed solutions, there's no need to wait for new discoveries: the time to act on improving maternal, newborn, and child health is now. We believe Canada can add significant value to this global effort by focusing on the most vulnerable and ensuring that they have access to front-line health workers providing core health services close to home.
Finally, in my work I have the privilege of meeting women and children in developing countries. They're not demanding exotic things, but evidence-based tools that have a real impact in their lives.
In Malawi I met women proudly showing me their harvest from planting diversified, nutritious crops that are giving them energy and their children growth; a child who showed me the benefits of keeping her own and her siblings' hands clean; women singing, encouraging each other about the benefits of breastfeeding; men and women together doing community role plays about the importance of spacing births and getting appropriate pre- and post-natal care; trained and equipped community health workers proudly showing me the impact of their work on children's growth charts; policy change happening at the national government level to fortify flour, something that we in Canada take for granted. I saw women, children, and families putting life to international polices, goals, and plans.
I've been engaged in international development for over 20 years. Opportunities for big impact and change come and go. There is a unique Canadian moment now, in which Canada is host to the G-8, in which research and experience all speak to the same conclusions, and in which there is consensus around specific interventions.
As Canadian NGOs we worked hard with one another and our international colleagues to find that sweet spot where there is consensus. We will be relentless in urging the government to take this moment, invest new, substantial, accountable funds for these proven interventions, and make a real impact on mothers' and children's lives.
Thank you.