Online consultation for the Every Newborn Action Plan draft is open until 28 February 2014

Ensuring optimal nutrition for a child is not always easy. Priority actions for nutrition need to be delivered by multiple sectors, agencies and actors. Reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health (RMNCH) is critical for scaling up nutrition specific interventions for women and children. Since the Global Strategy for Women and Child Health[1] was developed with support and facilitation of the PMNCH[2] a number of important efforts have grown to achieve the ultimate goal to reduce child mortality and improve maternal health and to mobilise and intensify global action for MDG’s 4 & 5[3].

Every Newborn: an action plan to end preventable deaths (ENAP) is a proposal triggered by the recognition that newborn survival has lagged behind improvements of maternal and under-five survival. A draft global action plan has been made available for comment with the final draft to be presented to Member States at the sixty-seventh World Health Assembly, in May 2014. For more information about ENAP click here and click here to view and comment on the draft plan before 28 February 2014.

Other efforts to improve RMNCH include; 

• Every Women Every Child (EWEC) is one of six initiatives[4] of the United Nations Secretary General that are building political momentum with member states to achieve the MDGs. As of February 2014, 74 countries (including 41 SUN countries) had made ambitious pledges to do more for women’s and children’s health. Every Woman Every Child aims to save the lives of 16 million women and children and improve the lives of millions more http://www.everywomaneverychild.org/
• Thousand Days is a movement helping to build awareness about the critical 1,000 day window of opportunity from the start of a woman’s pregnancy until her child’s second year. The right nutrition during this 1,000 day window can have an enormous impact on a child’s ability to grow, learn, and rise out of poverty http://www.thousanddays.org/
• A Promise Renewed (APR) is the banner under which some governments and partners are uniting to reduce under-five mortality rates. Facilitated by UNICEF, ARP supports concerted actions on three fronts; strengthening evidence-based country action plans, monitoring and reporting and promoting global communication and social mobilization for child survival http://www.apromiserenewed.org/