Nigerian President, Norwegian Prime Minister release report on saving lives of women, children

Nigerian "President Goodluck Jonathan and the Prime Minister of Norway, Jens Stoltenberg, have said this year will be 'a tipping point for change' and global awareness for saving more lives, especially those of women and children," Nigeria's This Day reports. In a report released on Tuesday in Oslo, titled "Accelerating Progress in Saving the Lives of Women and Children," Jonathan and Stoltenberg, who serve as co-chairs of the U.N. Life-Saving Commodities for Women and Children, "provid[e] an update on the significant developments and new commitments since 2010, when the United Nations Secretary-General launched the Global Strategy for Women's and Children's Health," according to the newspaper. Though they said progress has been made in saving the lives of mothers and children, "'we are off-track to reach our goals of reducing child deaths by 67 percent and maternal deaths by 75 percent by 2015,' they both admitted," This Day writes (Ugeh, 1/23).

In a Lancet commentary published on Wednesday, Jonathan and Stoltenberg write, "We are pleased that in 2012 the global community built on this momentum by launching initiatives to ensure further progress towards [Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 4 and 5 (for child survival and maternal health, respectively)]." They continue, "Most importantly, in recent years we have seen strong national leadership in many countries," and they describe several national-level initiatives. "If we can ensure effective collaboration between these efforts, through innovative national leadership, we are convinced we will together achieve a dramatically accelerated reduction in maternal and child deaths. We hope that we can look back on 2013 as the tipping point when the bulk of the Every Woman Every Child countries accelerated progress towards MDGs 4 and 5," they conclude (1/23).

Print This ArticlePrint Entire Report