Maternal Health and Child Nutrition and Millennium Development Goals 4 – Reduce Child Mortality.


The United Nations Millennium Development signed in September, 2000 committed World leaders to combat poverty, hunger, diseases, illiteracy, environmental degradation and discrimination against women. The 8 Millennium Development Goals [MDGs] were derived from the declaration. Each MDG had targets set for 2015 and indicators to monitor progress. Several of the goals were directly related to health. The MDG 4, which was to reduce child mortality [U-5 mortality] by 2/3 by 2015 from 1990.


The global U-5 mortality rate declined by more than half, dropping from 90 to 43 deaths per 1,000 live births between 1990 to 2015. Despite recorded population growth in the developing regions, the number of U-5 mortality declined from 12.7 million in 1990 to almost 6 million in 2015, globally.


Focusing on Maternal Health and Child Nutrition [MHCN] was crucial to further accelerate the progress in the reduction of U-5 mortality. MHCN is one of the initiative brought about by MDG4 to improve household food security, nutrition information and increase children’s chances of growing to adulthood.


MHCN has the world’s largest alliance for women, children and adolescents’ health and well-being with more than 1,250 partners varying from inter-governmental organizations, United Nations agencies, private sector, adolescents and youth groups, donors and foundations, health professional organizations, etc. the partnership played a critical role in the achievement of the decline of U-5 mortality recorded in the MDG final reports. Many neonatal deaths could be avoided with simple, cost effective and high impact interventions that address the needs of women and newborns across the continuum of care with emphasis on care around the time of birth.


Many of the various roles MHCN played in the achievement of SDG4 include;

• Provision and increase in vaccination rate amongst pregnant women and their children.

• Maternal and child health professionals provide information and access to sexual, reproductive and contraceptive services and family planning methods.

• Provision of recommended amount of antenatal care

• Skilled attendants for antenatal, birth and post natal care.