Progress in Implementing the Child Survival Strategy in the African Region

Under-five mortality rate in the African Region was estimated at 145/1;000 live births in 2007. These deaths were the result mainly of preventable or treatable conditions. A child survival strategy for the African Region was developed by WHO; UNICEF and World Bank and adopted by the fifty-sixth WHO Regional Committee in 2006 to address this high mortality rate.1 This report; which is a review made using reports and the results of a questionnaire sent to countries; summarizes progress in implementing the strategy as at December 2009 and proposes next steps for action. Significant achievement has been made in the areas of policy; strategy and plandevelopment; capacity building; partnerships and communication strategies; operations research; documentation and monitoring and evaluation. Also in scalingup of child survival interventions such as measles vaccination coverage; insecticidetreated nets use in children and provision of antiretroviral drugs to prevent motherto-child transmission of HIV. Currently; 21 countries are implementing the Integrated Management of Childhood Illness strategy in more than 75of the districts. Despite the achievements in some areas; coverage of some eff ective interventions remains low. Various health system challenges hamper the progress of child survival. These include inadequate country-level funding for scaling-up effective interventions; inadequate monitoring of coverage of interventions and human resource limitations. In order to increase coverage of eff ective child survival interventions and accelerate progress in implementation of the regional child survival strategy; the paper recommends several actions including the improvement of coverage of key child survival interventions and mobilization and allocation of resources to implement national child survival scale-up strategies and plans

What can be Done to Improve Women's Health Region?

Women constitute a key link in the chain of development actions worldwide. For women to be able to fulfi ll their role in society; however; they need to be in a state of adequate physical; mental and social well-being. Unfortunately; the huge majority of African women are still unaware of their fundamental rights to health; education and life; and suffer from ill-health and sub-standard living condition. Global leaders; including African ministers of health; have adopted a number of resolutions to improve women's health. However; the health situation of women in Africa continues to be poor; with 57of women in the African Region lacking access to assistance by qualified staff during childbirth; one out of twenty-six women being at risk of dying from birth-related complications; to mention a couple of significant indicators. Given that the issues of women's health are complex; this paper calls for multisectoral and concerted action involving the public and private sectors; nongovernmental organizations; communities and families. For this; it proposes that countries set up a multidisciplinary technical team composed of experts in health; gender and human rights to identify priority interventions for eff ective scaling up and resource mobilization for women's health at national level. Among the ways forward proposed in the paper are scaling up women's health-related interventions; using the primary health care approach in line with the Ouagadougou Declaration to effectively deliver women's health interventions; strengthening the capacity of women; families and communities to prevent diseases; and empowering them economically to enable them to take appropriate decisions related to their health and sexuality