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CHL
collaborates with JSI to support Healthy Mother/Healthy Child
program
Under the auspices of H.E. Dr. Mohammed
Awad Tag El Din, Minister of Health and Population (MOHP), the
National Conference on Safe Motherhood and the Millennium Goals
was held in Cairo on May 12, 2005. It provided a forum for local
and international partners and experts involved in issues
surrounding Maternal and Child Health in Egypt to discuss
challenges and best practices in safe motherhood programs. The
MOHP, USAID WHO/EMRO, the Egyptian Medical Syndicate, faculties
of medicine in several universities m. The conference also
served as an end-of-project review of accomplishments for John
Snow Incorporated, lead technical assistance providers for the
Healthy Mother/Healthy Child Project within the MOHP Directorate
of Maternal and Child Health Care.
The Communication for Healthy Living (CHL)
project collaborated with JSI by working with the State
Information Services Center to arrange media coverage and
produce 400 conference packages including IEC materials and
commemorative bags for participants. In addition, Mr. Ron Hess,
Chief of Party for CHL, co-chaired a session on Best Practices
for Improving Safe Motherhood, and the project exhibited an
array of IEC materials produced during the last year in support
of HM/HC. The conference received coverage on several news
shows, including the TV news broadcasts of Channel One and Good
Morning Egypt, and the Youth and Sport and Middle East radio
stations. Newspapers Al Ahram, Al Akhbar, and
Al Gomhouriya carried items about the conference as well,
and several TV talk shows—Camera 8, With the Family,
and Donia—featured topics related to the conference.
The conference served as the Egypt launch
of the Lancet Neonatal Survival Series, which highlights the
continuing need for a global focus on maternal and infant
health. Though 99% of neonatal deaths are in poor countries,
most published research relates to the 1% of deaths in rich
countries. The four papers in the series address the major gap
in knowledge and provide new evidence detailing the causes of
these deaths and the simple, yet effective interventions that
can save thousands of newborns that die every day. The exemplary
efforts of the MOHP have resulted in the a reduction of over 50%
in maternal and child deaths over the last decade, and the
conference provided an opportunity to develop strategies and
programs to further decrease neonatal deaths in alignment with
the Millennium Development Goals.
CHL is working with government and
non-government organizations to enhance their capacities in
order to meet the maternal and child health objectives of the
MDGs in particular. Through its Newlywed and Post-partum Care
Initiatives, CHL is conducting a series of integrated, intensive
activities that coincide with critical points in a new family’s
life when decisions can have a life-long impact on health. The
activities comprise health behavior change messages on pregnancy
and delivery, post-partum care, neonatal and infant care, and
the successful initiation of family planning and practice of
birth spacing delivered through a mass media campaign,
governorate-level publicity events, and village-level family
health interventions conducted by a network of health outreach
workers from the Ministry of Health and Population, the State
Information Services, and local NGOs and Community Development
Associations. |
