BRAC’s Global Strategy for Maternal, Neonatal and Child Health – Civil Society

Organisation: BRAC Key Organisational Data: BRAC is a development organization dedicated to alleviating poverty by empowering the poor to bring about change in their own lives. We were founded in in 1972 and over the course of our evolution, established ourselves as a pioneer in recognizing and tackling the many different realities of poverty. BRAC’s pioneering holistic model of development includes programs of financial services, capacity building and livelihood development as well as health, education and social justice that enable individuals and communities to realise their potentials. BRAC now reaches approximately 110 million people across 64 and, in recent years, has set new standards in south-south cooperation, taking its range of interventions to benefit over 28 million people in 9 countries in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean. To learn more, see www.brac.net. BRAC Global Health strategy focus to 2015: Guided by the belief that all lives have equal value, BRAC works to help all people lead healthy, productive lives. Our health programme supports this mission by harnessing advances in science and technology to save lives in poor countries. BRAC’s focus is on comprehensive Maternal, Neonatal and Child Health & Nutrition programs, which includes family planning, ante, intra and post- partum and neonatal care, child care, adolescent health, nutrition and prevention of key infectious diseases through continuum of care in Bangladesh. BRAC will replicate its Bangladesh MNCH model in other countries, such as, , , Southern , , and Haiti adapting the local contexts.

Area of Commitments made to Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Commitment Health for 2011 to 2015

Maternal, Neonatal, Child Health (MNCH) & Nutrition Financing: BRAC will work with government, foundations, donor government and multilateral granters to mobilize US $ 500 million to finance its

future programmes and projects in Bangladesh and US $200 million Finance in other countries. The total amount for the next five years will US$ 700 million.

Research We will invest and carry out operations research and impact assessment & disseminate findings compared to national statistics Dissemination and pre-post intervention: of research  Knowledge and practices findings  Community empowerment and the role of community support network  Service utilization  Performance of Community Health Workers and Village/Urban birth attendants Community support network  Voice & accountability

Evidence base Evidence We will also carry out policy research that draws on best practices and feed in recommendations to governments and other institutions to improve the institutional responses to MNCH. On the basis of the evidence gathered through the research we will make a public case for more political attention to MNCH and harness popular support for the issue.

BRAC’s Global Strategy for Maternal, Neonatal and Child Health – Civil Society

BRAC will engage with relevant local, national, regional & global

coalitions & networks to ensure MNCH is a priority issue for all governments, in line with MDGs 4&5.

Tracking of of Tracking

commitments Political Will & Will Political

The BRAC MNCH Programme in partnership with government, NGOs and private sector is now being implemented in urban slums of six (6) city corporations and also in ten (10) rural districts in Bangladesh to cover approximately 26 million poor populations. Using BRAC’s unique MNCH model (public-private partnership), such as, offering services by community health workers at community level and linking with facilities for managing complications through effective referral system. Within three-four years, rapid increase of service utilization and reduction of maternal and neonatal mortality were observed.

The strong evidence and experience has stimulated BRAC to take bold steps to reach half of the total 160 million (80 million) populations within the next five years, 2011-15. To support this effort, we will further strengthen our interventions by strengthening the system including quality of care and making further innovations:  Strengthening its community based innovative model;  Research social and structural barriers and identify solutions that enable the adaptation of key household

and community maternal and neonatal interventions;  Achieve greater equity and access by removing financial barriers to care;(Insurance)

Delivery  Initiating professional midwifery schooling to enhance skilled human resources for maternal and newborn care;  Promotes advocacy for supportive policies and increased funding at national and global levels  Introduce technology for grassroots health workers to provide better and efficient support during emergency This investment will ensure to prevent additional 323,899 maternal complications, avert additional 6,270 maternal deaths, additional 68,170 neonatal deaths and additional 98,243 child deaths in Bangladesh.

BRAC will be implementing MNCH programme beyond Bangladesh in Afghanistan, Uganda, Southern Sudan, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Haiti reaching 25% of the total populations (21 million of total 80 million) through its network of community health promoters and linkage with referral facilities. The investment will reduce maternal, neonatal and child deaths and diseases in these countries to a significant extent.