By Samantha Singson
NEW YORK, September 25, 2008 (C-FAM) – At United Nations headquarters this week, countries participated in a special high level event to discuss progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Declaring that MDG 5 to improve maternal health has seen the least progress of all the MDGs, participants emphasized good basic health care, not “universal access to reproductive health,” as the best ways of reducing maternal mortality.
During the discussions on the health-related MDGs, countries lamented that maternal mortality rates remained unacceptably high and focused their attention on the two proven methods of reducing maternal deaths – increasing skilled attendants at birth and improving emergency obstetric care.
In the lead-up to this week’s high level meeting, top UN officials like Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and UNFPA Executive Director Thoraya Obaid have stressed “universal access to reproductive health” to reduce maternal mortality, a theme she repeated at a separate side event co-sponsored by the governments of Chile, Finland and Tanzania. Ban Ki-Moon’s 2008 report on the MDGs laments that “universal access to reproductive health remains a distant dream in many countries.”
In 2000, when UN member states agreed to adopt eight broad, largely non-controversial Millennium Development Goals which address issues like eradicating poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, and reducing child mortality, “reproductive health” was deliberately left out. None of the MDGs makes any mention of “reproductive health” and neither does the Millennium Declaration upon which they are based.
The primary outcome of the high-level event will be a Secretary-General’s summary of the discussions from this week, as well as a compilation of the commitments made by states and members of civil society. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon will also be asking states to agree to an MDG review summit scheduled for 2010.