PMNCH 2021-2025 Strategy

Message from the Board Chair

Securing the health and well-being of women, children and adolescents is the greatest endeavour of our time. Health and well-being are also basic human rights. Whether or not we secure these rights for the most vulnerable women, children and adolescents is the ultimate test of whether we create – through very deliberate choices – caring and just societies, or whether we look the other way.

At the time of writing, the COVID-19 pandemic is fundamentally redefining the world we live in. COVID-19 has resulted in critical declines in sexual, reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health services. Approximately 80 million babies risk missing routine immunizations. Over 90% of students worldwide have been affected by school closures. The world faces a deep and sustained economic recession, and a reversal of significant recent progress towards the health-related and other Sustainable Development Goals.

Nothing is inevitable about the way that we rebuild society. It will depend on the choices we make: moral, political and fiscal choices about what and whom we prioritize, and how. This Strategy quotes the United Nations Secretary-General: “We are as strong as the weakest of our health systems. …There is an opportunity to rebuild differently, but this will require much more effective international cooperation.”

I firmly believe this to be true. The true measure of our strength is not how we maximize global economic outputs. It is whether an expectant mother has access to health care in rural Niger. It is whether an adolescent girl in a Karachi slum has dignity, and choices about her body. We must build the systems to deliver these outcomes. But none of us can do this alone.

It is against this backdrop that I am both proud and privileged to lead the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health. If fully realized, the sphere of influence of our partnership is almost without limit. It comprises over 1,000 institutions across 10 constituencies: from governments to United Nations agencies, to health-care professionals, youth-led institutions, NGOs and others.

The Strategy defines where the Partnership is going, why and how, and what we will seek to achieve over the five years to 2025. I urge you to embrace it, and to be a partner in its delivery and its ultimate success. Achieving the goals of this Strategy is our collective duty, a health and economic imperative, and the fullest expression of our humanity at this most testing time.

Rt Hon Helen Clark, PMNCH Board Chair