ONE for Four MDGS Equals Better World of Babies Free of HIV

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I got two messages from the folks at ONE last week. One was from Sheila Nix, U.S. Executive Director for ONE, personally asking for our help to send a message to the White House which will soon be announcing how much they'll be committing to the Global Fund. The message to President Obama reads:

Please commit $6 billion to the Global Fund over the next 3 years.

The focus is to make sure that no child is born with HIV.

Over 52,000 ONE members have already asked the President to give the Global Fund the support that it deserves. Let your friends and family know that this is the moment to add their name too.

The second message was on the same basic subject, taking a different tack and proving flattery can get you somewhere.

You write some great blogs about the MDGs and the work that is needed in pursuing and supporting them. Today ONE launched the NO CHILD BORN WITH HIV BY 2015. This campaign will be an intense burst for a week channelled through www.one.org, culminating with the UN Millennium Development Goals Summit next Monday (20-22nd September) in NYC. It is a really entertaining way to show some support! Hopefully it will generate some internet buzz as babies get sent around threatening to 'Throw the bottle out of the Pram' or 'Put us on the naughty step' unless we show some support.

Check it out at http://www.one.org/international/actnow/babyprotest/

We would immensely appreciate your support by signing the online petition and – if you're so inspired – to blog about it or share it with your friends by email or on Twitter. This is a cause that can only be made good with the help of the public. Every name on the petition counts.

I am so inspired though I usually don't go for the cutesy stuff. The policy being advocated by ONE does take the approach that asserts that the Next Millennium Development Goals 'should be more holistic' SciDev.Net in addressing the issues facing the developing world. By focusing on preventing babies from being born with HIV, ONE addresses 4 of the Millennium Development Goals 3. Gender Equity 4. Child Health 5. Maternal Health and 6. Combat HIV/AIDS and other diseases together. Getting the funding commitment is the first step in a long struggle.

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Right food, Right Time, Right Now

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I am on Twitter now with this online persona and keep finding more people and groups working on the Millennium Development Goals with which to connect. The latest was with the World Food Programme (which I connected to through a fellow MAKE NOISE for the Millennium Development Goals BloggersUnite blogger from the Philippines).

The World Food Programme or WFP connected back with me and sent me a direct message.

WFP: Malnourished mothers give birth to malnourished children - we can break the cycle of hunger http://t.co/Mg8MxfR @WFP (pls share this)

The link goes to the video below.

This combines a number of the Millennium Development Goals together. MDG 1. End Hunger is an obvious one but as the cycle of malnutrition makes clear MDG 5. Maternal Health is an important aspect of the problem and if malnutrition impacts developmental health it is also a matter of MDG 4. Child Health. Finally, since most of this is handled by women MDG 3. Gender Equity should also be natural connection.

It can also be extended to include MDG 7. Environmental Sustainability because as the folks from Oxfam pointed out,

Poor women around the world are hardest hit by changes in the environment. When wells run dry, they may have to walk hours farther for water. Women are largely responsible for feeding their families, so when crops fail and food is scarce, they're the last to eat or they go without.

Oxfam is spearheading Sisters on the Planet, bringing women from poor countries together with powerful American women leaders to put pressure on Congress and bring the voices of these communities directly into the debate.

Supporting Women's Health with the Global MOMS Act

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Back in June, I signed a Care2 petition supporting the Global MOMS Act which is designed to reduce global maternal mortality.

Implementation of MDG No. 5 Maternal Health would actually help stabilize our planet's population. It would also help to ensure economic vitality in our future, presuming we also fulfill the other of the 7 Millennium Development Goals.

As Kayla from the Care2 ThePetitionSite tells us:

No woman should have to put her life or health at risk during pregnancy or childbirth, and all new borns should have a healthy start in life. The Global MOMS Act will help countless mothers worldwide get access to quality health care services and reduce maternal mortality.

The term Maternal Death should become an oxymoron. Currently, they are are petitioner 12,857 and they are trying to reach 20,000. The bill seems to be going nowhere fast so needs all the help it can get. There doesn't seem to be any great amount of coverage by the main stream media.

Tell your members of Congress to support the Global MOMS Act and fight for women's health around the world. »

I did and got a response from one of them though it was not the one that is running for re-election and it was from the wrong part of the Congress .

Dear Mr. Dowling

Thank you for writing to express your support for the "Improvements in Global Maternal and Newborn Health Outcomes while Maximizing Successes Act" (Global MOMS Act) (H.R. 5268). I appreciate hearing your views on this pending legislation, and welcome the opportunity to respond.

Like you, I believe that the United States must continue to lead international efforts to improve maternal and child health care and reduce child mortality rates worldwide. During my tenure in the Senate I have worked hard to ensure that international maternal and child welfare programs are adequately funded. For example, as a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, I supported the $7.8 billion included in the fiscal year 2010 State-Foreign Operations Appropriations Act (Public Law111-117) for the Global Health and Child Survival Account, which funds programs to provide nutritional support and vaccines to women and children. Further, I coauthored a letter to Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND) and Ranking Member Judd Gregg (R-NH) requesting that the Committee support full funding for the President's fiscal year 2011 international affairs budget request of $58.5 billion, which includes funding to directly improve the health, nutrition, sanitation, and educational needs of women and children worldwide.

As you may know, the "Global MOMS Act" is pending consideration by the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and at this time, there is no companion bill in the Senate. Please know that I will continue to do my best to ensure that child health and welfare programs receive the funding they deserve, and be assured that I will keep your thoughts in mind should this legislation come before me in the Senate.

Again, thank you for writing. I hope that you will continue to write on matters of importance to you. Should you have any further comments or questions, please feel free to contact my Washington, D.C. office at (202) 224-3841. Best regards.

Sincerely yours,
Dianne Feinstein
United States Senator

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International Women's Day Message From AmnestyISOnline

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AmnestyISOnline is also holding an online event celebrating International Women's Day. Recently the sent me a message to my shoutbox at BloggersUnite:

"Thanks for joining AI-IS's IWD Event. Around March 8th AI's campaign Demand Dignity will launch a blog space. You are invited to blog on: 'Maternal Mortality; Women in Slum; Poverty and Women; MNC operations and its' affect on women.
Help us make IWD 2010 memorable! We will be checking in with you soon with updates and ways you can contribute on DD Blog. Please write online.communities@amnesty.org to know more. Until then, take action http://bit.ly/cwQXyb in supports of women's rights.

The other post I did on International Women's Day International Women's Day and Millennium Development Goal 3 Perfect Match looked at both domestic and international efforts to empower women and girls. This post will look at one of the reasons why this is needed and that is the lack of maternal health.

Sameer Dossani, the Director of Demand Dignity Campaign Amnesty International USA provided the story of Safiatou' tragic and needless lose of life which is only an example of what is repeated constantly around the world.

Information and transportation might have saved Safiatou's life But she was poor and pregnant in Burkina Faso, which put her life at risk. She had no prenatal care and suffered from anemia, didn't even know that iron supplements were important or that the local clinic gave the pills to pregnant women free of charge. Safiatou gave birth at home without the help of a trained birth attendant. After her delivery she hemorrhaged badly and required emergency care. With no way to get to the health center, her husband borrowed a motorcycle, but it had no fuel. He had to push the motorcycle 10 km to get gas. Safiatou died on the back of the motorcycle before she even got to the health center.

Safiatou's death was preventable and a violation of her human rights.

Their new report, Giving Life, Risking Death - Maternal Mortality in Burkina Faso¹, exposes the persistent, harsh reality faced by Burkinabe women like Safiatou. Its findings fuel our calls on the government to make immediate changes to ensure the rights of women.

Amnesty International is calling for the government of Burkina Faso to:

• allocate care equitably, prioritizing the poorest regions with the worst rates of maternal death
• lift the obstacles – including financial, geographic and quality barriers – that block poor, rural women from accessing life-saving obstetric care

My take on the story is not however just to repeat what was said (though truth is I actually do that a lot with this blog). It is to first to show that efforts like this do make a difference.

UPI.com reports that the African nation Burkina Faso pledges more maternity aid.

The head of the West African nation of Burkina Faso will do more to help pregnant women receive adequate maternity care, Amnesty International says.

The London-based human rights group announced Friday President Blaise Compaore has agreed to lift financial barriers that prevent women in his country from receiving emergency obstetric care and access to family planning.

This doesn't mean that the work is over just that progress can me made but more can be done.

It is also to again tie it to the Millennium Development Goals which provides the widest collaborative umbrella under which to meet this challenge. In fact this issue can be addressed by three of the Millennium Development Goals 3. Gender Equity 4. Child Health and 5. Maternal Health and multiple countries and regions.

The "PiGA DEBE FOR WOMEN’S RiGHTS" report from the African Campaign presents a review of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) with particular attention being paid to gender equality, women’s empowerment and commitment to improving maternal health in 17 African countries namely: Burkina Faso, Congo DRC, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The meaning of “PIGA DEBE” in Kiswahili is “make a big noise,” and draws its inspiration from millions of women’s voices in Africa who say “enough is enough. More people need to make noise about these issue and they can get their chance to make a difference on September 17 and 18, 2010 when the entire world will be Standing Up, taking Action, & Making a Noise for the MDGs!

When world leaders gather at the United Nations for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Review Summit in September, the voices of their citizens will follow them, telling them, loudly and clearly: “We will no longer stay seated or silent in the face of poverty and the broken promises to end it!’

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Global Health, Gates Foundation, and Giving a Dang

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It is the beginning of a new year and a new decade, making it a good opportunity to look over the past year or so that this blog has been in existence. This continues to be a personal experiment in how to use Web 2.0 for positive affect both personally and globally. This is not where I expected to end up when I started.

My first post was on 24 July 2008 End Poverty 2015 - Millennium Development Goals. This effort grew from what I was doing with My Pathways to New Paradigms blog. Initially, I was only thinking of ways to organize websites solely for my personal use (I had no idea about del.icio.us or diigo). The power of collaborative endeavors made possible by the the Internet not only applied to Web 2.0 but also to the efforts of change-agent (a term borrowed from Seth Godin, an important source of my looking at new paradigms) organizations doing their part to change the world for the better. Back on December 30, 2007, I was posting on a Los Angeles Times article on the Gates Foundation's Best Intentions Unintended Consequences (it was also the post that provided the inspiration to create this blog, due to a comment form Aditi). A couple of months later another post announced that Now, LA Times Recognizes That Africa's Anti-malaria Campaign Is Showing Results.

Recently, I received an even more positive update from fellow ONE member Melinda French Gates, who had visited Tsion, a hard-working young woman in the Ethiopia government's Health Extension Program.

Trained to tend to pregnant mothers, who otherwise would rely on traditional attendants unable to stop internal bleeding or resuscitate newborns, Tsion helped take the terror and fear of death out of childbirth for hundreds of women.

Bill and Melinda Gates are self-declared "Impatient Optimists" and their message was to celebrate successes in global health and especially when it comes to U.S.-funded global health initiatives through their online presentation titled "Living Proof: Why we are Impatient Optimists."

Thanks to 30,000 trained health extension workers like Tsion, access to health care in rural areas is rapidly expanding. And the health of Ethiopian children and women is improving.

That's why, when it comes to global health, Bill and I are optimists—but we're impatient optimists. We need to build on this success now, by expanding it to even more women in Ethiopia and helping families in other countries benefit from what Ethiopia has learned.

Sharing success stories is one of the most important things we can do to motivate and inspire others in the fight against global poverty and disease.

That is what this blog is all about. While the intent was to create something that sought to be transformative in promoting the Millennium Development Goals, its greatest impact has undoubtedly been on myself.

Reaching Out Helping Women Realize the Millennium Development Goals

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I received a request from Amnesty International requesting support for women in Sierra Leone. It fits in with 3 of the Millennium Development Goals 3. Gender Equity 4. Child Health 5. Maternal Health .

One in eight Sierra Leonean women die giving birth. Health care facilities are understaffed, lack basic equipment and medicines and are far from people's homes. Pregnant women and their families struggle to afford the costs of getting to a hospital and the costs of the care they would receive there.

• A higher proportion of women in Sierra Leone die in childbirth and pregnancy than almost anywhere else in the world
  
• Women and their families are forced to negotiate and pay for equipment and medications, and provide their own food and water, while they're in a health facility, at one of the most vulnerable times in their lives
  
• Most people live far away from a medical facility and cannot afford transportation costs to a hospital or doctor

So I signed the letter the following letter to help make sure that no more lives are cut short. Urge Sierra Leone's government to make maternal health a priority.

Dear President Koroma,

I am very distressed to hear of the high risks that women in Sierra Leone face in pregnancy and childbirth. I understand that more women in Sierra Leone die during childbirth than almost anywhere else in the world.

I respectfully urge you to make every effort to guarantee the health and well-being of pregnant women. Access to maternal health care services would be improved by allocating more money to health within the budget, by addressing the mismanagement of resources, by ensuring hospitals are better supplied and medical staff paid adequate salaries and by providing women and girls with information about their health and reproductive rights.

It is your duty as President to ensure that the right to life and the right to health of all Sierra Leonean women are respected and protected. The government of Sierra Leone should ensure that costs are not a barrier to essential health services, including emergency obstetric care and other reproductive health services.

Yours sincerely,
Brian Dowling

What would be even better is empowering women to help themselves. The story and video below provide two examples, One from the Stand Up Take Action Campaign and one from Care. It is only natural that I use it in a blogging post as this year the Stand Up Take Action End Poverty Now! event, taking place on October, 16th is intended to give a clear focus on holding governments accountable for improving the status of women and their rights.

Kenyan Women Use ‘Stand Up’ to Stop Harassment, Fight for Maternal Health By Monica Omollo

“Stand Up provided a platform for me to bring together the voices of rural women to speak out about issues affecting them,” she said. “It provides an opportunity to empower rural women and ensure that they understand that they have the power to change their current circumstances through advocacy.”Monica organized the first-ever public anti-poverty rally in the Nyanza province, about 300 km outside Nairobi. The event was presided over by Ida Odinga, the wife of current Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga.“The rally was considered unusual because most public rallies in this area have been political and hosted by politicians looking for votes,” she said. “The public was therefore very happy that we were out to find common solutions for their problems.”

March 25 Online live chat on maternal health

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This is another example of focusing on getting the word out more than on analyzing or commenting on a particular subject. This one came from the UN Millennium Campaign - www.endpoverty2015.org. This involves a number of the Millennium Goals - 3. Gender Equity 4. Child Health and 5. Maternal Health.

On March 25 at 10:00 am Eastern Standard Time, Womens' eNews' Kimberly Seals Allers will moderate a live chat with Annie Raja, General Secretary of the National Federation of Indian Women, and Dr. Jemima A. Dennis-Antwi, the International Confederation of Midwives' Regional Midwifery Adviser for Anglophone Africa.

Dear friend,

Do you know what the number one killer of young women in the developing world is?

It's not a disease whose cure eludes us, or a condition which the world lacks the resources to treat. It is pregnancy and childbirth.

Every year, 500,000 women die while trying to give life. That's one every single minute.

The vast majority of these deaths are preventable. As part of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) - a set of promises made in the year 2000 to eradicate extreme poverty, improve health, education and the environment and create a global partnership for development - 189 world leaders have pledged to reduce maternal mortality by three-quarters by 2015. But maternal health has seen the least progress of all of the MDGs, and the Goal is unlikely to be achieved unless urgent action is taken now.

In today's story on Women's eNews, Dr. Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem, Deputy Director for Africa at the United Nations Millennium Campaign -- which supports citizens' efforts to hold their leaders accountable for meeting the MDGs - shares a personal story of losing his sister during childbirth last month, and calls on the leaders of developing countries to mobilize domestic resources to ensure that mothers get the proper medical care they need.

Now, amidst this global emergency, the UN Millennium Campaign has partnered with Women's eNews, the online source of substantive information about issues of particular concern to women, to host a live online chat about maternal health. On March 25 at 10:00 am Eastern Standard Time, Womens' eNews' Kimberly Seals Allers will moderate a live chat with Annie Raja, General Secretary of the National Federation of Indian Women, and Dr. Jemima A. Dennis-Antwi, the International Confederation of Midwives' Regional Midwifery Adviser for Anglophone Africa. Both women will share their firsthand experiences from the front lines of the fight against maternal mortality, and discuss the importance for the world's women of achieving the MDGs.

About the moderator: Kimberly Seals Allers is Editorial Director of the Black Maternal Health Project, generously funded by the W.K.Kellogg foundation to raise awareness of U.S. maternal health deficits. She is also founder of Mochamanual.com.

Please visit www.endpoverty2015.org or www.womensenews.org to register in advance to log in to this event online. Questions for the panellists can be emailed in advance to maternalmortalitydebate@gmail.com or typed in during the event.

We hope you will join us online on the 25th for this important discussion!

Best wishes,
Salil Shetty, Director, UN Millennium Campaign
Rita Henley Jensen, Founder and Editor in Chief, Women's eNews

/ Copyright 2004 - 2007 UN Millennium Campaign

World Wide HIV/AIDS Looking For Solutions

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This final post in the series looks at global resources available to help overcome this challenge. The resources cited below were found at SciDev.Net of Science and Development Network, which "is a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to providing reliable and authoritative information about science and technology for the developing world."

AIDS Education Global Information System

AEGiS, a non-profit organization that is a web-based reference for HIV/AIDS information. AEGiS is a virtual HIV/AIDS library containing reference materials and late-breaking information from HIV/AIDS-specific publications and news sources from around the world. [I must admit to having seen an article on SciDev which raised some ethical concerns, but I can't find it now]

International AIDS Vaccine Initiative

IAVI’s mission is to ensure the development of safe, effective, accessible, preventive HIV vaccines for use throughout the world. IAVI is a global not-for-profit, public-private partnership working to accelerate the development of a vaccine to prevent HIV infection and AIDS. Founded in 1996, IAVI researches and develops vaccine candidates, conducts policy analyses, and serves as an advocate for the field with offices in Africa, India, and Europe.

The World Health Organization's approach to HIV/AIDs is to recommend that Universal voluntary testing, immediate treatment can reduce HIV cases

26 November 2008 | GENEVA -- Universal and annual voluntary testing followed by immediate antiretroviral therapy treatment (irrespective of clinical stage or CD4 count) can reduce new HIV cases by 95% within 10 years, according to new findings based on a mathematical model developed by a group of HIV specialists in WHO. The findings were published in The Lancet¹ today to stimulate discussion, debate and further research.

Finally, what of the future? One perspective comes from the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), Health equity, the financial crisis and Obama: Where next?

Amartya Sen put it succinctly when he commented on the report; ‘this WHO Commission has concentrated on the badly neglected causal linkages that have to be adequately understood and remedied’.

Global health debates too often focus on biomedical aspects of health and those working in this area rarely have space, place, opportunity or desire to link up with those working on the social science aspects.

During his campaign, for example, Obama pledged to increase spending on child and maternal health, and not at the expense of related important areas like HIV and AIDS. These policies are reinforced by a focus on health infrastructure (see the policy for Global Health Infrastructure by 2020), which will be vital to ensure equitable and context-specific service delivery. Another area in which the Obama administration is singing in tune with the Commission’s report is the focus on improving health-care systems to prevent the ‘brain drain’ of health human resources i.e. health professionals leaving the South for better pay in richer countries.

Finally, a story on a private/public partnership with community-based focus as a model for the future to address global health care. DHL partners with UNICEF to empower communities to improve child survival in Maharashtra via India Press Release by R & PM Edelman on 11/18/08. DHL's grant will fund a three-year UNICEF project to empower communities to improve child survival rates in 1,000 villages in Maharashtra.

"The partnership with DHL is a good example of the private sector taking the initiative to champion developmental concerns in rural India complementing the Government's commitment to 'inclusive growth'," said Mr.Vijay Satbir Singh, Secretary of Women & Child Development in Maharashtra, at the partnership ceremony launch.

"Community involvement is the key to sustainable development. If we are serious about improving child survival and reducing maternal mortality, we must give youth and their families the tools that will enable them to survive and lead healthy lives," said Karin Hulshof, UNICEF Representative in India.

Related posts
World Wide AIDS the Tragedy
World Wide AIDS Day Business Struggles Business Answers

The U.S. Election and Science and Hope

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The next event of major importance to the United States, and arguably to the world, is the American Presidential Election. My political leanings put me squarely in the Barack Obama camp and have from the beginning of the primaries. The question for us in the States is how will President Obama govern? Here is one possible paradigm.

Lynn Sweet Predicts the Senate Outcome if Obama Wins
Sweet recognizes Obama's allies in the Senate as a strength, but also asserts Obama goes by the numbers and may initially cater to Republican Senators.

The question for this blog is how does that relate to the Millennium Development Goals? The answer is significantly. The inquiry though goes beyond specific political choices to understanding how this affects our world and our ability to make beneficial changes in it. One important pathway for change has been science and one favorite source has been Scientific American. They recently had a special issue on the American Election. I am providing links that they sent me below.

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MAGAZINE

In-Depth Report: Science and the U.S. Election

• The Big To-Do List--Scientific Challenges Facing the Next President
• Science Questions for Would-Be Presidents
• Will the Networked Generation Rock the Vote--Or Wreck It?

According to Avaaz, this election will change the globe -- it's as simple as that!It will determine if we see a timed end to the war in Iraq, whether America joins the global community in tackling climate change,how much the nation invests in renewable energy and whether America redoubles its commitment to fighting global poverty.

If you want to see if your views generally match the views espoused by this weblog take the U.S. Presidential Choice Quiz Now.

Other posts:
Barack Obama on Millennium Development Goals
Barack Obama and the Millennium Development Goals featuring a look at the impact of the American elections on Global Health asking "What would Barack do?" from Open Budgets Blog.

Report for the World's efforts on mdgs: What we did last week

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According to the Oasis California News Blog the U.N. declares MDG event 'exceeded our most optimistic expectations'.

[T]he U.N. announced new contributions and commitments that it said could amount to $16 billion or more. That total included $4.5 billion to get 24 million more children in school by 2010 by way of the Education for All campaign, $1.6 billion to foster food security, $3 billion to launch the Malaria Action Plan, and almost half a billion dollars in new pledges to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, $2 billion related to child mortality and maternal health, and as well as pledges to support national health plans and access to clean water and sanitation, and education.

The complete list of the pledges, which come from government, private sector, non-governmental organizations and other advocacy groups, is available here

Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation held a World MDG Blogging Day on 25 September 2008. They endeavored to be collaborative. In the last week 43 videos were upload to the In My Name YouTube site. In My Name is an ongoing collaborative effort.

The United Nations Blog on High Level Event MDGs came to an end.

Where do we go from here? That's a question I have been asking myself. We have heard well intended platitudes and promises from governmental officials before. There was little mainstream news coverage on the "High Level" event. The issue did not warrant a question in the first presidential debate. There is still Blogging Day and the Stand Up event coming up next month.

The cause did show some ability to organize a response in a short period of time, but despite all the promise of Web 2.0 these efforts still seem somewhat fragmented and unfocused. I have more to read and think about. Did find another mdg blogger :::the:::mdgs::: . As far as where the United Nations are heading:

No other formal statement was issued at the end of the day, but there appeared to be support for Ban's proposal to hold a MDG review summit in 2010.

General Assembly President Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann announced the start of a consultation process to develop a resolution to outline the process for that meeting, according to a U.N. news release.

In the meantime, I can learn more, write more and connect more.

Achieving the Millennium Development Goals

Sphere: Related Content Achieving the Millennium Development Goals originally via End Poverty 2015 - Millennium Development Goals by admin on 2/8/08

End Poverty 2015 - Millennium Development Goals

Sphere: Related Content G8 action urged to avert six million mother and child deaths every year via End Poverty 2015 - Millennium Development Goals by admin on 4/21/08

The Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health has called on G8 leaders to fulfil their previous commitments to global health and commit to new, long-term financing for essential interventions that could avert the deaths of over 6 million mothers, newborns and children every year.

The statement calls for an additional $10.2 billion annually, the estimated cost to ensure universal coverage of basic services needed to achieve Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 4 and 5 on reducing child death and improving maternal health by 2015, respectively.

"The world is expecting G8 leaders to show the way in confronting this health crisis faced by millions of mothers and children who do not have access to essential care" said Jeffrey Mecaskey, a representative of the Save the Children Alliance. "The Countdown report gives us all the information we need. We can achieve MDGs 4 and 5, it's simply a question of making the right political choices. "

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