Nepal hosts success factors multi-stakeholder review workshop

21 MARCH 2014 | KATHMANDU, NEPAL

A national consultative stakeholder’s workshop in Nepal brought together the Ministry of Health and Population, various actors from the government health sector, government non-health sector, National Planning Commission, UN agencies, INGOs and NGOs to discuss what factors have enabled Nepal’s success in reducing maternal and child deaths.

Nepal is one of the countries in the Global South that has made remarkable progress in reducing its’ burden of maternal and child deaths. These efforts have been consistent over the past decades, and has led to a 47% decline in under five deaths. Similarly, the number of women who die from pregnancy and delivery related causes has nearly halved.

During the workshop, participants broke up into small groups with each group given a set of questions for discussion with conclusions presented to the bigger group at the end of the session. The questions aimed to explore a wide range of factors including what policies, programs, strategies, plans and political factors had been instrumental in Nepal’s success in decreasing maternal and child mortality.

Among many other health system factors the groups highlighted some key areas as contributing to success including:
  • the National Policy for Skilled Birth Attendance
  • the commitment to increase the number of comprehensive Emergency Obstetric Neonatal Care facilities,
  • the Community-based Integrated Management of Childhood Illness programme; and
  • the instrumental role of Female Community Health Volunteers as essential factors in improving maternal and child health in Nepal.

Some other areas noted as instrumental factors for progress were the increased enrolment of girls and women in secondary school, better road infrastructure and the role of research and evidence based policy.

There was strong consensus across the groups, and the discussions reflected that the commitments from the government had been great that progress was a result of multisectoral investments.

The Success Factors study of which Nepal is a part, is a collaborative effort between the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health, World Health Organization, the World Bank, the Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research, John Hopkins University Bloomberg School, The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and other partner organizations. This collaborative project aims to find out what factors distinguish Nepal and other high performing countries from countries have not performed as well in reducing maternal and child mortality, given similar levels of economic development. The project also explores how Nepal and other countries have achieved their impressive performance indicators.