Quality healthcare for all children – where are we in achieving the MDGs for maternal and child health?

Micky Chopra, Chief of Health and Associate Director of Programmes at UNICEF’s New York Headquarters. Research interests: maternal, newborn and child health, immunization, paediatric HIV/AIDS, and  health systems strengthening, policy and research.
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Sanjana Bhardwaj, Chief of Health and Nutrition, UNICEF. Research area of interest: public health systems and policy, implementation science.
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At the United Nations General Assembly in 2000 more than 150 global leaders, including the President of South Africa, signed the Millennium Declaration. In doing so they committed their countries to achieving a set of goals known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Child health is represented by MDG 4 that states that all countries will reduce the under 5 mortality rate (U5MR) by two thirds by 2015 from the base year of 1990. For South Africa this would mean bringing it down to a rate of 20/1,000 live births by 2015. For maternal health MDG 5 states that all countries will reduce by three quarter the maternal mortality ratio (MMR). For South Africa this means reaching a MMR of 38/100,000 live births by 2015.