(MENAFN- The Maravi Post) The Malawi Government is hosting the 21st board meeting for the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (PMNCH) in Lilongwe from 13th to 14th December, 2017.
Minister of Health and Population, Atupele Muluzi said it is very impressive to see how this alliance of more than 700 organizations in 77 countries could work coherently in supporting maternal, newborn, and child health issues.
He made the remarks Wednesday during the official opening of the Board Meeting at the Bingu International Convention Centre (BICC).
During the meeting board members are expected to discuss a number of key agenda items that include progress made by PMNCH in 2017, work plans for 2018 and improvements to the global architecture supporting the Every Woman Every Child movement led by UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres to offer better value countries.
PMNCH is chaired by Graça Machel, former Minister for Education in Mozambique and leading advocate for women's and children's rights while vice-chairs are the Governments of India and the United Kingdom.
Muluzi said the partnership was initially formed to bring together interested parties across the sector to support Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 4 and 5 and continues beyond the life of the MDGs to offer leadership towards the Sustainable Development Goals.
'It was this February 2017 when my ministry in collaboration with the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health held a multi-stakeholder meeting to strengthen the maternal, newborn and child health programme in Malawi,' he said.
Muluzi added that this was on the back of the launch of the Health Sector Strategic Plan and the National Community Health Strategy, both of which prioritise child health within service delivery.
'These documents illustrate the high impact interventions that the health sector will implement for the period 2017 to 2022 to ensure universal health coverage to the people of Malawi,' he said.
Muluzi said it was his hope that the meetings would help move this project further forward, and support the further development of the national adolescent girls and young women strategy.
In her speech, Machel said: 'We believe that achieving the SDGs is heavily dependent on our partners working together in stronger alignment, within the Every Woman Every Child architecture and throughout the life-course, for the good of the most vulnerable among us.'
She said PMNCH is pleased to do this in concert and is deeply committed to this common agenda.
The PMNCH mission is to increase the engagement, alignment and accountability of partners by creating a multi-stakeholder platform that will support the successful implementation of the Global Strategy for women's, children's and Adolescents' Health, enabling partners to achieve more together than any individual partner could do alone.
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