. Child related MDGs Of direct relevance to the work that the Child and Adolescent Health and Development unit of WHO’s Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean is pursuing in the Eastern Mediterranean Region is goal 4 “Reduce child mortality”, for which the target set is to “reduce by two-thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate”. For this target, three indicators have been selected to help track progress: Under-five mortality rate; Infant mortality rate; and Proportion of 1-year-old children immunized against measles. Among the total list of 18 targets, other targets of key importance to our work in the Region are:  Target 2 “Halve between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger”, with indicator 4 on “Prevalence of underweight children under 5 years of age”; and Target 8 “Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases”, with indicators 21 on “Prevalence and death rates associated from malaria” and 22 on “Proportion of population in malaria risk areas using effective malaria prevention and treatment measures”.  Recalling the commitments made in the Declaration, the Fifty-fifth World Health Assembly in resolution WHA55.19 of 18 May 2002 recognized that “maternal, child and adolescent health and development have a major impact on socioeconomic development” and urged Member States to “strengthen and scale

-- Downloads -- Child-related MDGs pamphlet English (pdf, 141 kb) Planning for child health - related MDGs pamphlet English  (pdf, 222 kb) 55th World Health Assembly, 2002 English (pdf, 222 kb) 56th World Health Assembly, 2003 English (pdf, 222 kb) UNGASS links to submenu item “UNGASS intermediate targets”   English - Arabic - French -- Links -- Eight Development Goals: Goals, targets and indicators "Moving towards the Millennium Development Goals: investing in maternal and child health" - Regional Committee 51st session

up efforts  to achieve the development goals of the Millennium Declaration”, in particular those related to reduction of maternal and child mortality and malnutrition, and continue to advocate child health and development as one of the public health priorities. Top

 

 

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	Progress toward MDG 4 in the Eastern Mediterranean Region

 

 

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	CAH/EMRO and the Millennium Development Goals

Why is the Regional Office Child and Adolescent Health and Development unit encouraging Ministries of Health to plan for the child health-related Millennium Development Goals?

Questions and answers:  

1. Why is CAH/EMRO encouraging Ministries of health to designate focal points for the MDGs?  

2. Why is the Child and Adolescent Health and Development unit at EMRO particularly interested in following up on the MDGs?  

3. What is the place of the strategy on integrated child health (IMCI) within country strategies to achieve the MDGs?

4. Which points should be emphasised concerning the goals related to child health in the MDG reports?

5. What is the difference between the MDG report and the Plan of Action that CAH/EMRO has encouraged countries to prepare?

6. What is the role of WHO?

1. Why is the Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean (EMRO) encouraging ministries of health to designate focal points for the MDGs? The Goals are about “development” and therefore it is expected that governments will assign the coordination of efforts towards achieving MDGs to ministries, agencies or councils other than the Ministry of Health. However, many MDGs relate to health, which is now recognized to be a major contributing factor to socioeconomic development. It is for this reason that we are encouraging ministries of health to identify focal points for the MDGs within their ministries.  Top

2. Why is the Child and Adolescent Health and Development unit at EMRO particularly interested in following up on the MDGs? Not only are many of the MDGs related to health, but many of these are also directly or indirectly related to child health. The strategies to achieve the MDGs in countries will therefore also include strategies to reduce infant and under-five mortality. CAH is therefore in the frontline in this regard. Top

3. What is the place of the strategy on integrated management of child health (IMCI) within country strategies to achieve the MDGs? The IMCI strategy is currently seen as the most suitable integrated public health strategy available to improve child health indicators in countries. It has been included in many World Bank-supported programmes, e.g. as part of a basic package of essential health care services in health sector reforms. The WHO Regional Director for the Eastern Mediterranean, in his statement to the 49th Session of the Regional Committee for the Eastern Mediterranean, stressed “child health” as one of the priorities of the Regional Office, emphasized the key role of the IMCI strategy in pursuing child health, and invited countries in the Region to adopt the IMCI strategy. Top

4. Which points should be emphasized concerning the goals related to child health in the MDG reports? When assessing whether the goals on reduction in infant and under-five mortality are achievable in a country, it is important to consider the top leading causes and underlying causes of mortality in children in the country, the policies and strategies to address them, and progress of work in those areas. If a country has formally endorsed the IMCI strategy as a key strategy on child health, as is the case for many countries in the Region, then the MDG reports should explicitly mention the IMCI strategy under policies and strategies to achieve the child-health related goals. Furthermore, it should be noted that infant mortality trends are not linear trends following the same direction over time: the lower the level of the under-five mortality reached, the higher the efforts required to obtain further reductions in the future. Neonatal mortality becomes increasingly important as under-five and infant mortality rates decrease, and interventions to reduce it are more challenging.  Top

5. What is the difference between the MDG report and the Plan of Action that EMRO has encouraged countries to prepare? The United Nations Country Teams (UNCTs) support governments in preparing national MDG reports in each country. These concise reports are meant to be tools for raising awareness, advocacy, building partnerships, and bringing forth further political commitment. They are not an in-depth analysis, that may be included in other strategic and national development plans.  Detailed plans are however required to achieve the goals. These plans may already be part of existing country strategies and/or require further actions. We feel that it would be useful as a powerful planning tool to have a plan by ministries of health that shows what strategies and actions will be carried out to pursue the health goals specifically, and that sets targets for intermediate periods to make monitoring of progress more efficient and in line with national planning frameworks. These plans would be more technical than the MDG reports, detailing specific actions for a health-oriented technical audience while the MDG reports target a broader and more diverse public audience. In this respect, it should be noted that the United Nations document “A world fit for children”, an outcome of the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on Children (UNGASS) of May 2002, includes a plan of action, listing specific targets and actions to pursue the MDGs and intermediate targets for this decade (2000-2010).  See also UNICEF web page on UNGASS  Top

6. What is the role of WHO? WHO, as a technical UN specialized agency and member of the United Nations Country Team, has, among other things, responsibility for the technical quality of health-related MDG data, which includes the collection, analysis and validation of these data. Where national data are considered to be of inadequate quality, their limitations (and sources) should be noted (United Nations Development Group – UNDG, Reporting on MDGs at the country level, Guidance Note, October 2001). Gender and rural/urban disaggregation is essential, as noted by the UNDG. WHO, together with UNICEF in many cases, has also been given the responsibility for reporting on most of the health-related indicators included in the MDGs. WHO is therefore expected to play a leading role in these efforts in countries. Top

It requested the Director-General to report to the Fifty-ninth World Health Assembly in 2006 on  WHO’s contribution to the implementation of the strategy, with particular emphasis on actions related to poverty reduction and the attainment of internationally agreed child-health and development goals.   

The Child and Adolescent Health and Development (CAH) unit of the WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean has urged countries to identify specific strategies and develop a plan of action for the achievement of the child health-related MDGs, similar to the action taken after the World Summit for Children in 1990, when 155 countries prepared national programmes of action to implement the Summit goals. Top