As three-day summit opens, Stephen Harper says elimination of preventable deaths of mothers, newborns and children in developing countries is our “flagship development priority.”
Prime Minister Stephen Harper, right, and Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete open the Maternal, Newborn and Child Health Summit in Toronto on Wednesday.
Stephen Harper is calling the elimination of preventable deaths of mothers, newborns and children in developing countries “Canada’s flagship development priority.”
The prime minister made the comment Wednesday in Toronto during the opening session of his three-day summit, “Saving Every Woman, Every Child.”
The summit has drawn hundred of delegates from around the world who are dedicated to maternal and childhood health, among them the Aga Khan, Melinda Gates, Jordan’s Queen Rania and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
Sitting on stage with Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete, Harper told how Canada, for “very little cost,” could have a “truly transformative” effect on millions of lives.
“By doing what we are doing,” he said, “we are able around the world to have mothers have healthy pregnancies, survive those pregnancies, nourish their children and provide their children with the basic resources.”
“We have to do it because so many lives have been lost, mothers and children,” added Kikwete, who described Harper as a “champion” of maternal and child health. “No woman should die while giving life to another human being.”
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According to the “Every Newborn” series published this month in The Lancet medical journal, 2.9 million newborns die each year before they reach 4 weeks old; 2.6 million are stillborn.
The Toronto summit comes one year before Canada’s $2.85-billion commitment to maternal and child health runs out.
In 2010, during the G8 summit, Harper launched his Muskoka Initiative, pledging $1.1 billion in new funds and $1.7 billion in existing funds to what has since emerged as his signature foreign aid initiative.
But, despite Harper’s commitment, his Muskoka Initiative has come under fire for its lack of transparency, as a recent critique in The Lancet reported. An accounting of how and where the funds are being invested, the respected journal reported, is all but impossible to get.
Canada has also been criticized for avoiding the critical issue of contraception and abortion, which experts say is part of the full range of maternal health.
Which is why many summit-goers were taken aback when Kikwete, sitting next to Harper, said contraception is a key part of his country’s maternal health programs. “Our coverage is now 35 per cent of women,” he said. “We want to get it to 60 per cent.”
“President Kikwete dares to mention contraception. Brave!” tweeted Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet. “There has been something of an effort to erase family planning from this meeting.”
The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that 120 million women around the world want access to family planning. But contraception is not on the agenda at the summit.
“Prime Minister Harper’s initiative on maternal and child health is clearly important and sincere,” Horton told the Star in an email from a plenary from which media were barred. “He has called this week’s meeting ‘Saving Every Woman, Every Child.’ But fewer will be saved if a full range of sexual and reproductive health services are not provided to those most in need.”
“Abortion kills 47,000 women a year, but many, many more maimed and are affected for the rest of their lives,” Hélène Laverdière, the NDP’s international development critic told The Star following the opening session.
“We have to offer the full range of maternal health services like our partners do,” she said. “We would be more in step with the rest of the donor countries around the world.”
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2014/05/28/pm_calls_maternalchildhood_health_in_developing_countries_canadas_development_priority.html
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