Dear friends,

The last week of September is an exciting time here in New York City, as the world comes together at the UN to confront its most pressing challenges and paralyze our streets. This year’s events showed us both the tantalizing nearness of our goal and the obstacles we must overcome to reach it.

President Obama brought not just a new tone to America’s voice but also a public commitment of $63 billion for global health, some of which will go to strengthen public health systems, whose inadequacy is the key reason that Millennium Development Goal 5 (Improve maternal health) is so far off track. Women dying in childbirth, he said on September 23rd, are a daily challenge to our common humanity.

That same day, FCI — as lead advocacy partner in the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health — helped to organize an event, hosted by the UK prime minister and the president of The World Bank, called Investing in Our Common Future: Healthy Women, Healthy Children. The focus was on funding for health systems: the presidents of several developing nations promised to provide free health care for women and children, and donor countries committed their support with over $5 billion in new health aid over six years, much of it through new and innovative mechanisms. The event also launched a new global Consensus for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health, setting out five key action steps to save the lives of more than 10 million women and children by 2015.

This represents real progress, but it mainly highlights the work still to be done. It is so profoundly not enough.

The Consensus calls for $30 billion of additional funding specifically for reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health services over the next six years. However, this figure does not include basic investments in strengthening health infrastructure and personnel, and it assumes that donor governments will meet their existing commitments, which few are doing. Barack Obama told the world this week that “the future will be forged by deeds and not simply words.” It is up to all of us to make sure that our leaders follow the hopeful words we heard in New York with actions that actually save lives.

All our best,

Ann Starrs, President