Improving the Health of Women & Children Around the World by 2015

The MDG Health Alliance works in partnership with UN agencies, the private sector, nonprofit organizations, academic institutions, and others to support country efforts to accelerate progress toward achieving the health-related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs 4, 5, and 6).The MDGs will not be met without new global efforts to prevent and treat the leading causes of child mortality (pneumonia, diarrhea, preterm birth, birth asphyxia, malaria and neonatal infection) in the countries where deaths are concentrated, particularly India, Nigeria, DRC, Pakistan, China and Ethiopia. As undernutrition is the leading risk factor for death among children in the developing world, all strategies need to incorporate a strong nutrition component.
Phase 1 of the Alliance’s child health agenda will focus on preventing child diarrheal deaths in the two regions of the world where they are most concentrated — the northern states of India and Nigeria. In Phase 2 this approach will be extended to the other high child mortality countries along with efforts to reduce child pneumonia deaths and neonatal deaths.