Reaching every mother and baby in Africa with essential care

Supportive regional and national policies are in place to accelerate maternal and child survival in
Africa, including more recent focus on the 1.16 million newborn who die each year on the continent.
The biggest gap is not in policies, but between policies and the action required to strengthen the
continuum of care and increase coverage of essential maternal, newborn, and child health (MNCH)
interventions in countries.
Yet some African countries are progressively reducing newborn death rates despite low gross national
income. What can we learn from these examples, especially about overcoming key barriers such as
inadequate investment, financing of MNCH and human resource challenges? Even if opportunities
within existing programmes are maximised, gaps in access and utilisation will still exist, especially in
countries with weaker health systems and especially for the poor. What, then, are the options in these
settings, and what can be done now while working towards stronger health systems? Can the “second
primary health care revolution” in Africa be useful in MNCH scale up? Integration between MNCH
programmes is much easier to say than to do – how can integration be promoted? How will progress
be monitored and governments and partners be held accountable?