PMNCH 12th Annual Accountability Breakfast

Watch event recording

An early morning crowd gathered in New York on Sunday 22 September for the 12th PMNCH annual Accountability Breakfast, taking place at a moment of reset for women’s, children’s and adolescents’ health and well-being. The event, supported by UNICEF, UNFPA, WHO, Global Financing Facility, AlignMNH, White Ribbon Alliance, opened with a stark reminder that, every 7 seconds, a pregnant women or newborn dies. This is happening on our watch showed the video, highlighting that people are calling for change, emphasizing the need to galvanize action and tackle the unacceptable weight of preventable deaths. “Business as usual will not work’’, said Rajat Khosla, PMNCH Executive Director in his welcoming remarks, “the women, children and adolescents of the world are expecting no less of you in this room.

With fresh political impetus through the 77th World Health Assembly resolution (WHA77) on accelerating progress on maternal, newborn and child mortality, PMNCH partners met to discuss how to accelerate the implementation of the WHA77 resolution at the country level. The WHA77 resolution is ‘’the renewal of a promise already made, of a pledge not yet delivering as promised”, opened the moderator Kate Gilmore, Board Chair, IPPF and Former UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, “we are not on track to honour the SDGs for women, children and adolescents’’. This requires leaders to examine their leadership and what it is they are delivering. Accountability is the key. “Accountability is the price of leadership”, said Kate, ‘’if you aren’t ready to be accountable, you aren’t ready to lead.

With these powerful words setting the scene for the 12th Accountability Breakfast, Rt Hon Helen Clark, PMNCH Board Chair, stressed the importance of rallying the PMNCH multistakeholder partners to ensure women, children and adolescents are kept high on world leaders’ agendas as they meet for the Summit of the Future and the high-level United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) week. Leaders must be reminded that they are accountable for the flattening of the reduction of maternal mortality since 2015 and the slowing down of progress on newborn and under-5 mortality.

Following these remarks, Dr Bruce Aylward, Assistant Director-General, World Health Organization, and Ted Chaiban, Assistant Secretary-General, Deputy Executive Director, Humanitarian Action and Supply Operations, UNICEF, stressed the emerging data on women’s, children’s, and adolescents’ health, especially in humanitarian and fragile settings, with the impacts of conflicts and climate change exacerbating the already dire situation. However, with the newly endorsed WHA77 resolution, we have a pathway, agreed by all Member States, to ensure action: scaling antenatal, postnatal, and emergency obstetric care, ensuring access to quality and affordable sexual and reproductive services, establishing sick child and newborn units, investing in the health workforce including midwives and nurses, and leveraging innovation, such as the malaria vaccine.

What is needed to accelerate the implementation of resolution and ensure these actions are translated at the country level? What are different stakeholders ready to do?  The Accountability Breakfast saw four panels of different stakeholders – civil society, governments, multilateral organizations, and financiers – articulating their commitment to ending preventable maternal, newborn and child mortality.

In the first panel, civil society members discussed the important advocacy work to influence policies to fight the rising anti-rights movement, to address basic issues (malnutrition, clean water, sanitation, infrastructure etc.), empower health professionals and youth, and ensure that commitments and data are translated and owned at the country level by stakeholders to foster accountability on the commitments made for women’s, children’s, and adolescents’ health. “We need to support those who are making policies, so that policies actually save lives” noted Dr Githinji Gitahi, Global CEO, AMREF Health Africa.

Moderated by Joy Phumaphi, the government panel included Hon. Dr Pakishe Aaron Motsoaledi, Minister of Health, South Africa, Hon. Dr Austin Demby, Minister of Health, Sierra Leone and Dr. Guled Abdijalil Ali, Director General of Federal Minister of Health and Human Services, Somalia, who spearheaded the WHA77 resolution. South Africa highlighted the importance of ensuring universal health coverage through their national insurance programme to ensure mothers, children and adolescents can access quality and affordable healthcare without detrimental out-of-pocket payments. Sierra Leone stressed their commitment to enforcing ban on child marriage and establishing safe motherhood, including preventing unwanted pregnancies. Somalia underlined their commitment to initiatives such as by initiatives such as Every Women, Every Newborn Everywhere (EWENE) and Child Survival Action Initiative, and their hope to work with different stakeholders to accelerate progress to put them back on track.

n the third panel, multilateral organizations, WHO, UNFPA, HRP, UNICEF and UHC2030, pledged their commitment to providing support to countries to accelerate progress in sexual, reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health, especially in humanitarian settings. In particular, eliminating barriers to access to and availability of healthcare and commodities, including safe abortion, contraception and family planning, facilitating regional production, and scaling up and strengthening the quality of health workforce education and training.

Finally, different stakeholders – Gavi, the Global Financing Facility, Global Fund, Gates Foundation, FCDO, IPU and Fondation Botnar - discussed the importance on increasing investments in women’s, children’s, and adolescents’ health. The need for innovative and intersectoral financing, the urgency to ensure budgetary allocation for the MNCH agenda and breaking down siloed financial decision-making, exploring innovative financing options between private and domestic sources, facilitating efficiency of public financial management, and ensuring coordinated asks from the funding agencies and recipients, were amongst the key priorities stressed.

It is on our watch to ensure no woman, child or adolescent is left behind.