Speaking in Brussels on Wednesday, Neale Richmond said it was vital the issue remained a “priority” for policymakers at EU and member state level.
Richmond, Minister of State for International Development and Diaspora of Ireland, said that while impressive progress had been made in the field in recent years, the results of such improvements “still remain out of reach for too many.”
The Minister, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the EU, was a keynote speaker at a conference on maternal and child health,organised by the Gates Foundation.
Richmond, who said it was a “huge honour” to address the audience, said his own country, Ireland, had over the years prioritised the issue and was now “one of the safest places in the world to give birth.”
Innovation has helped contribute to this but similar improvement was still out of the reach for many around the world, he noted. This showed that the tangible benefits of health innovation needed to reach “more people and faster.”
“There is still much more to be done,” he told the conference, held at the Royal Library of Belgium (KBR).
Called “Investing in Our Future: How Innovation Can Help Save Women and Children’s Lives’, the gathering was an associated presidency event as a part of Ireland’s EU Presidency.
The Minister went on to warn of the possible consequences of budget cuts to aid and warned that those working in the field of maternal and child health may, in future, have to “do more with less.”
One way forward, he argued, was for closer cooperation between policymakers and the NGO sector, adding that all stakeholders “must not give up.”
The event brought together innovators and decision-makers for a lively exchange on how the most exciting health innovations of today may save more lives.
An exhibition showcased some of the innovative work being done to help those in need including simple devices such as UNICEF’s mother-infant mid-upper arm circumference tape.
This is a simple “yet powerful” screening tool that can be use to identify at risk mothers/care givers and infants.
Another featured at the small expo at the event is a spatial repellent which works by releasing an active ingredient that repels mosquitoes from indoor spaces.
Used with other proven tools, they could help protect at least 60million people by 2028,including pregnant women, infants and young children, who face the greatest risk of malaria.
Another speaker was Dr Anita Zaidi, President for Gender Equality at the Gates Foundation, who noted that “remarkable progress” has been made in the last 20 years or so in the field of maternal and child health.
Dr Zaidi, taking part in a panel discussion, went on to outline the further progress she hopes will be made in the coming years.
But she added, “This will take work, innovation and access. But it can be done by us working together. With sufficient momentum we can make things happen.”
The conference heard that there had been two decades of “extraordinary, if uneven” global progress on maternal and child health, nutrition and resilience and gender equality.
The event was told how cutting-edge innovations can be scaled across resource-constrained health systems in low- and middle-income countries and how “smarter financing”, political leadership and partnerships can translate innovations into better outcomes at scale.
It also heard of “real stories of innovation and their impact” and perspectives from the Global South.The meeting included representatives from institutions, member states, innovators, multilateral institutions, think tanks, civil society and philanthropy.
A spokesman for the event said the aim was “to firmly place maternal and child survival on the EU policy agenda, ensuring it is recognised as a core priority within Europe’s development and global health commitments.”
The debate sought to make the case that investing in innovation is “not only a moral imperative but a strategic one — essential to building the resilient health systems, economies and societies of the future, in Europe and globally.”
Since 2000, the world has made extraordinary progress on maternal and child survival, it was said.
Maternal deaths have fallen by 40 per cent, yet an estimated 260,000 women still die each year from complications of pregnancy and childbirth, equivalent to around 700 deaths a day.
The number of children dying before their fifth birthday has roughly halved, from nearly 10 million to nearly five million. But that progress is “fragile” and gains have stalled where the burden is heaviest.
Reductions in under-five mortality were 42 percent slower from 2015 to 2023 than from 2000 to 2015 and in some places progress has reversed.
With aid budgets being cut around the world, the full impact of those cuts on mothers and children has yet to be shown, the event was told.
Many of these deaths are almost entirely preventable, and the tools to save these lives already exist, from maternal RSV immunisation to AI-enabled ultrasound and low-cost devices like the postpartum haemorrhage drape, that can help detect dangerous blood loss after childbirth.
The spokesman said, “The question is whether they can be deployed at the scale and speed to reach where the need is greatest, and how innovation can make EU funding work harder, delivering health, economic and social benefits for women and children globally, as well as at home.”
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