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Dear Members,
As we close the year and reflect on the important milestones achieved for women’s, children’s, and adolescents’ health, I am filled with gratitude for the energy and commitment of our PMNCH community.
This past month has been busy. PMNCH attended COP29 to emphasize the unique needs of women, children, and adolescents, ensuring their health is considered in climate policies and financing. Through coordinated advocacy based on the PMNCH Advocacy Brief on climate change and women’s, children’s, and adolescents’ health, PMNCH contributed to the a new collective quantified goal on climate finance that encourages countries to ensure climate financing benefits the most vulnerable communities, including women and girls, children and youth among others. For more information on PMNCH advocacy at COP29 click here.
We also embarked on the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, a campaign close to our hearts, during which we highlighted how violence against women not only devastates lives but directly impacts maternal, newborn, and child health, perpetuating cycles of trauma and poor health outcomes.
This week, we were reminded of the universality of these challenges with International Day of Human Rights and Universal Health Coverage (UHC) Day which helped us underscore the links between basic human rights, health equity, and the preventable deaths of mothers and children. To commemorate these, we hosted the last in our three part policy dialogue series: Ready, Set, Implement on the theme: Improving financing to reduce mortality of women, children and adolescents and leverage benefits for societies and published an opinion piece in Business Daily Africa and spoke to CNBC Africa about Why Africa should rethink its health funding model.
Looking ahead, 2025 promises to be a year of both reflection and action. It will be a pivotal moment to deepen our partnerships, sustain momentum from the adoption of the 77th World Health Assembly resolution (WHA77) on accelerating progress on maternal, newborn and child mortality, and integrate our work even more tightly with the global commitments on health and development.
As we enter this new year, let us keep our shared priorities in sharp focus: ensuring that no mother, newborn and child should die or suffer illnesses from preventable causes.
On behalf of the PMNCH Secretariat, I wish you all a happy, healthy, and peaceful New Year. Together, we have made 2024 a year of transformative progress, laying a strong foundation for the opportunities and challenges that 2025 will bring.
Warm regards, Rajat