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Collaborating towards maternal, child health

Minister of Health and Population, Atupele Muluzi is impressed with the alliance of more than 700 organisations in 77 countries supporting maternal, newborn and child health.

Muluzi said this recently when government hosted the 21st board meeting for the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (PMNCH) at the Bingu International Convention Centre (BICC).

Muluzi (Right) with some of the delegates

He said the partnership was initially formed to support Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 4 and 5 as well as offer leadership towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

“It was in February this year when my ministry, in collaboration with the PMNCH, held a multi-stakeholder meeting to strengthen the maternal, newborn and child health programme in Malawi,” he said.

The minister said it was his hope that the meetings would help move the project  forward and support the development of the national adolescent girls and young women strategy.

During the meeting, board members discussed key items such as progress made by PMNCH in 2017, work plans for 2018 and improvements to the global architecture supporting the Every Woman Every Child movement led by United Nations Secretary General, Antonio Guterres.

The partnership is chaired by Graça Machel, former Minister for Education in Mozambique and leading advocate for women’s and children’s rights.

Her vice-chairs are the Governments of India and the United Kingdom.

In her speech, Machel said: “We believe that achieving the SDGs is heavily dependent on our partners working together in stronger alignment within the Every Woman Every Child architecture and throughout the life-course, for the good of the most vulnerable among us.”

She said PMNCH is pleased to do this in concert and is deeply committed to that common agenda.

The PMNCH mission is to increase the engagement, alignment and accountability of partners by creating a multi-stakeholder platform that will support the successful implementation of the Global Strategy for women’s, children’s and Adolescents’ Health, enabling partners to achieve more together than any individual partner could do alone.

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