This country should increase funding for maternal health

This year, if the government can honour its commitments at the Maputo AU meeting to spend at least 15 per cent of its national budget resources on healthcare, this will be the greatest gift ever to the country’s mothers and their unborn children.

Yesterday was a very important day in the world- Mother’s Day. It was a day when literally every family in the world celebrated and honoured mothers and motherhood because ultimately, all of us came to this world through our mothers.

But as many families celebrated their mothers, up to 106 households in Uganda were in sorrow because they had lost their newly born baby. Such is the sad state of affairs surrounding maternal and child health in Uganda- that every day, 106 babies die on their first day of life.

According to statistics, Uganda loses 103,000 children who are under 5 years, each year and out of these, 15,100 are ironically lost on what should have been their first day of life, turning the 9 months of anticipative waiting into a day of misery. Additionally, another 39,000 babies are lost within their first month of birth. That means of the children dying needlessly before their 5th birthday, over 40 per cent of these are dying within their first month of life.

The just-released Save the Children 14th annual State of the World’s Mothers Report shines a light on the most challenging issues facing mothers and children and includes the Mother’s Index, which shows where mothers and children fare best and where they face the greatest risk of mortality.

This year’s report focuses on the critical first day of life. More than 1 million babies die on the day they are born, making the birth day the most dangerous day for babies in nearly every country, rich and poor alike.

The report includes the first ever Birth Day Risk Index, which identifies the safest and most dangerous places to be born. It highlights the unequal life chances for mothers and children; nearly all newborn and maternal deaths occur in developing countries where pregnant women and newborn babies lack access to basic health care services – before, during and after delivery.

Both indexes place Uganda amongst the worst 50 countries.
The report also highlights approaches that are working to bring essential healthcare to the hard-to-reach places where most deaths occur. And it shows how millions more lives can be saved each year if we invest in proven solutions and help mothers do what’s best for their children.

The report specifically references the work of the UN Commodities Commission and calls for action to increase access to the four life-saving commodities for newborn survival identified by the Commission. The four solutions are:
• Cortico steroid injections to speed up lung maturation for unborn babies, given to mothers at risk of pre-mature births. These cost less that $1 dollar.
• Injectable antibiotics to treat common bacterial infections e.g pneumonia. These too cost less than $1 dollar.
• Use of chlorhexidine to clean umbilical cords and belly buttons that also costs less than $1.
• Use of basic, resuscitation equipment to help babies with first-breath difficulties, that costs less than $6 that has helped millions of babies take their first breath.
All political leaders should step up efforts to tackle newborn, child and maternal mortality through:
• Strengthening health systems through recruiting, training, deploying and retaining healthcare workers so mothers have greater access to skilled birth attendants.
• Fighting the underlying causes of new-born mortality, especially gender inequality and malnutrition.
• Investing in low-cost solutions that can dramatically reduce new-born mortality.
• Increasing commitments and funding to save the lives of mothers and new-borns.

Whilst Uganda has made huge progress in tackling child and maternal mortality, evidence on the ground shows we still have a long way to go to ensure we reach Millennium Development Goal 4 of reducing child mortality by two thirds by 2015. Reaching this goal and, more importantly, saving millions of children’s and mother’s lives will require an increased focus on the steps needed to reduce newborn mortality.

Fortunately, the release of this report is a few weeks to the reading of the 2013/14 national budget and, therefore, provides a reference point for the decision makers on where more resources are desperately needed.

It is important that the government commits significant national budget resources towards providing high quality, accessible and affordable healthcare for its citizens in line with both the National Development Plan and the recently unveiled Vision 2040.

This year, if the government can honour its commitments at the Maputo AU meeting to spend at least 15 per cent of its national budget resources on healthcare, this will be the greatest gift ever to the country’s mothers and their unborn children.

Ms Burroughs is the country director, Save The Children, Uganda