What Happens After Women Come Through the Door?
Steve Hodgins
The UN Secretary General has led an initiative to which $40 billion has been committed for maternal-child health. This has resulted in the formation of the Commission on Information and Accountability for Women’s and Children’s Health. The Commission, in turn, has formed a Working Group on Accountability for Results, chaired by Lancet editor Richard Horton, which has been tasked with recommending how results should be tracked and proposing a short list of indicators.
For maternal health, the working group has recommended tracking maternal mortality ratio and “attendance by a skilled provider.” Although not reflected in the proposed indicators, their recommendations included a strong call for attention also to be given to quality of care. This is to be commended. It is important to make the content and quality of care a priority, rather than only tracking contact with the health care system, which is really all we are measuring using the standard indicators of skilled birth attendance and antenatal care visits.
With significant new funding commitments for improving women’s and children’s health over this past year, we have a valuable opportunity to effectively focus the attention of policy makers, donors, program managers and technical assistance partners in a way to bring about substantial gains in health status.
