Launch of Global Business Plan for Meeting Mdgs 4 & 5
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Issue No. 10 - November 2008 News WHO D-G and Goodwill Ambassador Six months after the devastating earthquake in Sichuan province, China, WHO's for maternal, newborn and child Director-General, Dr Margaret Chan, and WHO Goodwill Ambassador for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health, Ethiopian supermodel Liya Kebede, visited the site and health visit earthquake-affected areas met with health workers and families who were affected. in China On 5 November, Dr Chan and Ms Kebede took part in the opening ceremony of a new wing of Xiaoquan Township Hospital. This hospital suffered some structural damage as a result of the quake, and is now adding a new wing. Dr Chan and Ms Kebede then proceeded to the nearby Wuhui Village Clinic where they spoke with local health workers about the challenges of running a rural clinic, and about their experience of the earthquake. The health workers explained that, at the time of the quake, they stayed on duty, living full time at the hospital for several months, to ensure the health of the population. They went on to the city of Chengdu, where they visited Xinhua Community Health Centre and the Sichuan Academy of Medicine Sciences, which integrates traditional Chinese and Western medicines. The following day, Dr Chan and Ms Kebede visited the West China Hospital, Sichuan University, where a rehabilitation centre is providing health services to Credit: WHO/N. Otto survivors of the earthquake. On the final day of her visit to China, Ms Kebede visited two maternal and child health facilities in Beijing. In the morning, she visited the Beijing Maternal Hospital where she spent time in the mother-infant room, the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, and also visited a pre-father class. In the afternoon, she visited the Capital Paediatric Hospital, known for its top-notch child care facilities. For more information on Liya Kebede's role as WHO's Goodwill Ambassador for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health, visit: http://www.who.int/goodwill_ambassadors/liya_kebede/role/en/index.html Credit: WHO/N. Otto New tools for strengthening national WHO's Department of Child and Adolescent Health and Development (CAH) firmly legal and policy frameworks to supports the notion that survival, optimal health and development, and access to good basic health care and services are not just basic needs, but fundamental improve child and adolescent health human rights of all children and adolescents. It is therefore committed to ensuring that its work is systematically informed and guided by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and other relevant international human rights instruments. One important aspect of the Department's work in the field of human rights is strengthening countries' legal and policy frameworks to support effective and sustained implementation of programmes, and more equitable access to services. Despite many governments' efforts to improve accessibility, utilization and quality of health services for children and adolescents, legal, policy and practice barriers continue to exist both within and outside the health sector that constrain or impede much needed progress. Systematic use of the CRC provides a supportive legal impetus for improving child and adolescent health programmes, and introduces an element of government accountability to international commitments into related Credit: UNAIDS/P. Virot planning processes. In late 2007, CAH teamed up with the Department of Reproductive Health and Research, and the Program on International Health and Human Rights at the Harvard School of Public Health, to develop a series of tools for strengthening countries' legal and policy frameworks to support child and adolescent health programmes and services. The first tool aims to help countries apply a human rights framework to identify and address legal, regulatory and policy barriers to improving adolescents' access to sexual and reproductive health services. It enables a systematic application of human rights principles -- including non-discrimination, participation and accountability -- to policies and programming. It also enables a comprehensive examination of laws, regulations and policies to ensure they are supportive of, rather than a barrier to, adolescents’ sexual and reproductive health, and are compliant with a government’s international and national human rights obligations. Field tests of the tool for assessment of adolescent sexual and reproductive health law and policy are currently under way in Sri Lanka and Tajikistan, with further application planned in the Region of the Americas in early 2009. The second tool is intended to guide governments in undertaking a rights-based situation analysis of child survival in their country by: 1) applying a CRC framework to collect data on key areas of the legal and policy environment that significantly impact child health/survival programmes, services, and outcomes; 2) combining this information with existing data on the national child health/survival programme; 3) analysing combined data to identify strategies for strengthening national programmes and promoting child rights; and 4) synthesizing and integrating findings into the child health strategic planning process. The first half of 2009 will see the first field test of the child rights situation analysis for child survival. CAH is currently working with partners to identify a suitable test site for the project. The urgent need for such tools was re-iterated during a recent expert consultation and conference in New York on legislative reform to achieve human rights, organized by UNICEF, and supported by the Inter-Parliamenty Union (IPU) and the European Union. The consultation and conference, in which CAH and the Pan- American Health Organization participated and presented the aforementioned tools, provided a unique opportunity for securing wide support for this work on legislative and policy reform, and further discussions to strengthen collaboration in this area are planned with UN partners and the IPU. For more information on CAH's work on rights, see: http://www.who.int/child_adolescent_health/topics/rights/en/index.html Special supplement in Journal of Approximately one million newborn deaths could be avoided every year through Perinatology the promotion of optimal newborn care practices at home. To be most effective, these interventions need site-specific information on existing newborn care practices, barriers and facilitating factors for adopting optimal practices. They also need information on how to reach those who are the decision-makers in the family in a convincing and motivating way. Such information is often collected in the context of research projects, as part of the “formative research” for intervention design. Despite its value, this information often goes unpublished. To meet this need, WHO's Department of Child and Adolescent Health and Development (CAH) organized a workshop on formative research for newborn health interventions in Udaipur, India, in April 2006. The workshop brought together the experience in conducting formative research from recently completed and ongoing studies to evaluate newborn health interventions. Investigators from nine studies in five countries in South Asia and Africa participated in the workshop. Credit: WHO/P. Virot A collection of papers resulting from these studies has been edited by CAH staff and is due to appear as a special supplement to the December 2008 issue of the Journal of Perinatology. As the studies addressed different maternal and newborn care practices, it was possible to examine and present in the supplement a comprehensive range of areas of care. Studies focused on childbirth practices, early initiation of breastfeeding, umbilical cord care, low-birth-weight care, and care seeking for neonatal illness. The last two papers in the supplement describe the process of use of formative research findings in the design of a women's group intervention in Nepal and that of a home-based newborn care intervention in Ghana. The information in the supplement is applicable to many developing countries, particularly in Asia and Africa, for developing and implementing programmes for improving newborn care practices. An electronic copy of the supplement will be available for download at: http://www.nature.com/jp For more information on CAH's work in the area of newborn care, visit: http://www.who.int/child_adolescent_health/topics/prevention_care/child/en/ High-level consultation to accelerate The South-East Asia Region accounts for more than 174 000 maternal and 3.1 progress on MDGs 4 and 5 in South- million child deaths every year, of which 1.3 million are newborns. The Region faces a great challenge in meeting the targets set out by Millennium Development East Asia Goals (MDGs) 4 and 5 for reducing maternal, newborn and child mortality. A high-level consultation was convened by WHO 14-17 October 2008 to address the challenges and reach regional consensus on a set of well-defined actions. The aim was to boost countries’ efforts to achieve MDGs 4 and 5 in a sustainable manner through strengthening health systems and using the primary health care (PHC) approach. The consultation was attended by more than 120 people from almost all countries in the Region. Participants included policy-makers, programme managers, health providers, academics, professional organizations and donors. It was held in Ahmedabad in the Gujarat state of India, which has achieved good progress on MNCH and serves as a useful model. In addition to the working sessions,