Elevating the cause for women and children, a race against time

Monday, September 27th, 2010 - One comment

Elevating the cause for women and children, a race against time

As Ban Ki-moon explained, piecemeal approaches to advancing the circumstances of women and children produces piecemeal results, so we need to do a better job at coordinating and integrating our efforts and ensure that we build upon our knowledge and wisdom, and not recreate the wheel.

United Nations Secretary‐General Ban Ki‐moon and Heads of State and Government, as well as other stakeholders announced the launch of the Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health, a $40 billion effort to achieve Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5 by 2015.

The Global Strategy, led by the UN Secretary‐General, lays out an approach for global collaboration that will identify the policy changes needed as well as critical interventions that have been proven to improve the health of women and children.

According to a UN press release, the Global Strategy’s success will be dependent in part by the support of international organizations including UNFPA, UNAIDS, UNICEF, WHO and the World Bank, who will be collaborating to mobilize political and operational support. For instance, ensuring that women and girls have an equal opportunity to health. T

he release also noted that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the GAVI Alliance, and the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, TB, and Malaria will also be working to ensure integration of services and efforts across a broad range of health needs.

“We welcome the Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health, which highlights the importance of investing in women and girls to meeting the Millennium Development Goals,” United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, adding, “We look forward to working with the Secretary General and the important partners he has brought together to address maternal and child health – an issue that deserves to be at the top of our development agenda.”

In order to support the Global Strategy and help the global health community make strategic, evidence-based decisions to increase the return on investment of future programs, K4Health (funded by USAID) provides organizations and working groups a space to organize, manage and share their resources so that their unique experiences and wisdom are not lost, but built upon.

Ban Ki-moon said that piecemeal approaches to advancing the circumstances of women and children produces piecemeal results, so we need to do a better job at coordinating and integrating our efforts and ensure that we build upon our knowledge and wisdom and not recreate the wheel.

“The Global Strategy asks us to be smart, strategic, and resourceful as never before,” Dr. Margaret Chan, Director‐General for the World Health Organization, said. We have less than five years to achieve the lofty goals set 10 years ago, so it is time to be smart, and it is time to truly utilize the knowledge management and collaborative tools available.

Throughout the week of the MDG Summit, Mashable, 92Y and the UN Foundation will host the UN Week Digital Media Lounge, which will bring issues related to the UN and the Summit on the MDGs to 92Y with in-person briefings from global leaders from governments, civil society, NGOs, the entertainment world, the private sector, and digital media and technology.

The K4Health Blog (www.k4health.org/blog) will be providing live coverage of UN Week and related activities throughout the week, so stay tuned. You can also follow the discussion on Twitter using the hashtag #UNWeekDML.