Tagged: Tim Mastro

  • Pushing for progress on maternal, newborn and child health

    The numbers are shocking. Each year, 2.8 million babies die during their first 28 days of life, while almost 800 women die every day in pregnancy or childbirth.

    A vast majority of these deaths are preventable through simple interventions: providing mothers and their children with access to basic, quality health care, especially during pregnancy and childbirth; encouraging mothers to breastfeed; and treating diarrhea and pneumonia, two of the leading killers of children under 5 years of age.

    Despite the impressive progress that has been made in recent years, achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) on reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health (MDGs 4, 5 and 6) by 2015 will require an all-out global push.

    In June, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) announced a major realignment of US$2.9 billion of its resources to “save up to half of a million children from preventable deaths by the end of 2015.” In addition, USAID introduced an ambitious strategy, Acting on the Call: Ending Preventable Child and Maternal Deaths, to dramatically increase progress in 24 countries that account for 70 percent of child and maternal deaths.

    This is an important policy shift — one that has the potential to have great impact on development by saving the lives of 15 million children and nearly 600,000 women by 2020. FHI 360, a member of the Advisory Group for Acting on the Call, supports USAID’s commitment. We have seen how evidence-based interventions in maternal, newborn and child health are making a difference in communities around the world.

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  • On April 15, 2014, FHI 360 and its partners hosted a one-day symposium to discuss challenges and opportunities faced by the noncommunicable diseases (NCD) and HIV/AIDS global communities. Our co-host was the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) Centre for Global Non-Communicable Diseases. Other collaborators were the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the University College London (UCL) Grand Challenge of Global Health. FHI 360 experts who spoke include:

    • Peter Lamptey, MD, DrPH, MPH, Distinguished Scientist and President Emeritus
    • Timothy Mastro, MD, DTM&H, Director, Global Health, Population and Nutrition
    • Tricia Petruney, MA, Senior Technical Officer
    • Kwasi Torpey, MD, PhD, MPH, Technical Director, Strengthening Integrated Delivery of HIV/AIDS Services, Nigeria

    View the presentations from the symposium to hear our experts’ and partners’ perspectives on how these different disease communities can work together for more common, efficient and cost-effective strategies in the prevention and control of NCDs and HIV.