Britain is to press its G8 partners to intensify efforts to lower the "shocking and shameful" levels of maternal mortality which have barely fallen in many developing countries over the past 20 years, David Cameron announced.
Cameron called for the G8/G20 summit in Toronto later this month to set "an ambitious target" of saving three million more lives by 2015.
As a sign of Britain's commitment to cutting maternal mortality, one of the eight millennium development goals (MDGs) set in 2000, a new £5m fund is to be established to help midwives and health workers in Britain share their skills with birth attendants, nurses and doctors in the world's poorest countries.
Cameron [said]: "In many of the poorest countries pregnancy is a life-threatening condition. By the end of today about 1,400 women will have died in pregnancy or childbirth, nearly all of them in the developing world. A decade ago, the world set a target of reducing maternal mortality by 75% by 2015. Yet once again, for all the talk of development goals, little has changed. Levels of maternal mortality in many regions have barely fallen in 20 years. That is shocking and shameful. But it doesn't have to continue like this."
The prime minister cites the example of his Lib-Con coalition to show how progress can be made rapidly.
"The last time Conservatives and Liberals were in government together maternal mortality in Britain was called 'the great blot on public health'," he writes of 1930s Britain.
"Our predecessors turned this around with new policies and resources, including the establishment of a national midwifery service. Within 15 years maternal deaths had fallen by 80%. It's now time to take a similarly radical approach abroad."
Cameron's focus on maternal mortality shows how his government's approach to international development follows Labour's in some respects. Douglas Alexander, the last international development secretary, said last September progress on the MDGs on maternal and child mortality was "significantly off track". The goals are meant to be met by 2015.
Cameron discussed the MDGs with Stephen Harper, the Canadian prime minister, who is hoping to broker an agreed position before the UN world development summit in September.
Source: The Guardian [UK], 3 June 2010, http://www.ippf.org/
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