Dear colleagues and friends,
Good afternoon to everyone here in Geneva, and good morning or good evening to everyone joining us online around the world.
Happy World Health Day!
As you know, World Health Day is WHO’s birthday – and today we turn 77.
It was on this day, the 7th of April, in 1948, that the WHO Constitution entered into force.
The WHO Constitution outlines 22 core functions of the Organization. One of those functions is “to promote maternal and child health and welfare”.
In other words, maternal and child health has been part of WHO’s DNA since the beginning.
The theme for World Health Day this year is healthy beginnings, hopeful futures. It reminds us that the way we start life plays a huge role in determining everything that comes after.
When women and newborns not only survive childbirth but enjoy good health, it benefits families and communities, and contributes to economic development and stability.
Since 2000, the world has made great progress: maternal deaths have declined by 40% and newborn deaths by just over 30%.
The report we are launching today presents more good news: in 2023, for the first time, not a single country was classified as having extremely high rates of maternal deaths.
These gains are being driven by advancements in research and service delivery, which are helping us to address the leading causes of maternal death, including postpartum haemorrhage.
WHO is also supporting countries to scale up interventions to increase survival for small and sick babies, including specialized newborn care units and kangaroo mother care.
And with partners, we are improving access to skilled midwifery care.
None of this work is possible without partnerships, which is why together with UNICEF and UNFPA we established the Every Woman Every Newborn Everywhere initiative, or EWENE.
I am pleased that the Executive Directors of UNFPA and UNICEF, Natalia Kanem and Catherine Russell, will also share their messages with us today.
EWENE ensures action for maternal and newborn health under one roof, so that we coordinate more effectively with local and international partners in places that need it the most.
It is now supporting more than 50 countries to improve access to high-impact interventions and bolster health systems.
Stronger partnership is more important now than ever, as we seek to reinvigorate progress towards the SDG targets in the face a dramatically constrained financial environment.
Since 2016 progress has slowed, and every year we continue to lose millions of newborns and hundreds of thousands of mothers during birth and shortly afterwards, mostly from preventable causes.
Most deaths occur in the poorest countries or communities, and especially in warzones and other fragile environments.
It is in these areas where the recent cuts to development assistance will have the starkest impacts.
So let me leave you with three priorities as we move forward in these difficult times:
First, prioritization. We need to focus on what we know works, scaling up evidence-based practices, adapted to the local context, for maximum impact.
Second, investment. We need to make the case that investments in maternal and newborn health deliver a rich return over many years in the health of children, adolescents and adults, and in the stability of communities, countries and economies.
Third, partnership. No agency or country can do it alone. We need to work together, learn from each other, and make sure that we engage the communities we serve.
Thank you all once again for your commitment to working for hopeful futures, and healthy beginnings, for our mothers, our sisters, our babies, and for all of us.
I thank you.
