All mothers and children need skilled healthcare close to where and how they live, to act immediately when complications occur. This care can best be provided by a registered nurse or a professional health worker, in appropriate healthcare facilities. These professionals can avert, contain or solve many of the largely unpredictable life-threatening problems that may arise before, during or after childbirth and thus reduce child and maternal mortality. But they do need the back-up only a hospital can provide to help mothers and children who present challenges that go beyond their competency or equipment.

Health systems such as these are simply not a reality for millions of people living in poverty around the world. The consequences are unacceptable. That is why Make Poverty History is working in 2008 and beyond for more urgent government and citizen action to make every mother and child count.

We applaud the Australian Government’s recent expansion of programs to improve health systems, and in particular services for women and children in the region. We urge the Government to further expand support for basic health systems by contributing Australia’s fair share of the aid needed to help developing countries achieve the Millennium Development Goals to significantly reduce child and maternal mortality by 2015 and to turn around the major infectious diseases of HIV and AIDS, TB and malaria.

To this end, Make Poverty History calls on the Australian Government to take the steps outlined in this policy document (PDF: 43 KB).