His Excellency Dr Mam Bun Heng, Minister of Health,
His Excellency Professor Eng Huot, Secretary of State for Health,
Colleagues from our international partners,
Ladies and gentlemen.
It is a great honour to be here in Phnom Penh to help launch the Ministry of Health's new Situation Room for Maternal Deaths in Cambodia. I would like to thank Dr Mam Bun Heng, Minister of Health, and Professor Eng Huot, Secretary of State for Health, for inviting me to participate. I also want to congratulate them on their many years of strong leadership and commitment to improving the health of all the Cambodian people.
As we all know, a significant reduction in the number of maternal deaths is one of the eight Millennium Development Goals world leaders set at a September 2000 meeting at the United Nation General Assembly in New York. The goals are quite ambitious, ranging from a 50% reduction in extreme poverty to a halt in the spread of HIV/AIDS and the provision of universal primary education. In fact, the United Nations Millennium Declaration marks the first time the global body unanimously agreed on a time-bound set of goals and targets specifically intended to improve the human condition.
Three of the eight MDGs directly focus on public health issues: maternal health; child health; and combating HIV/AIDS and other significant communicable diseases. Several other MDGs, including an end to extreme poverty and hunger, an improvement in basic environmental and sanitary conditions, and the promotion of gender equality, are closely linked to health.
The United Nations can set goals, and international organizations and development agencies can provide support, develop strategies and draw up guidelines. But we all know that we cannot achieve our goals unless there is strong support in each and every country, in each and every community. It is for that very reason that I was very pleased to learn firsthand from His Excellency Prime Minister Hun Sen when I met him in Phnom Penh last October of his unwavering commitment to achieve the MDGs, and particularly his interest in MDG 5—which promises to reduce maternal deaths by three quarters between 1990 and 2015.
The importance of achieving this goal cannot be overemphasized. Just think about it: Every minute of every day a woman somewhere in the world dies of complications related to pregnancy or childbirth. That's more than a half million women every year.
With roughly 500 maternal deaths for every 100 000 live births, Cambodia ranks with the Lao People's Democratic Republic and Papua New Guinea as the three countries in the Western Pacific Region with the highest maternal mortality ratios.
Certainly, Cambodia has made real progress on this front. The proportion of women who deliver babies in health facilities has doubled in recent years, and the number of health centres with a midwife in place and the number of emergency obstetric care clinics have increased. But more needs to be done.
When I visited last October, the Health Minister and I travelled to several rural hospitals and health centres. I was impressed by the quality of care health care workers are providing, as well as their efforts to track maternal and child health statistics. Those of us working in public health know how vital these statistics are. We cannot measure our success in combating maternal deaths if we aren't able to confirm the number of fatalities in one time period so that we can compare it to a previous period.
The health centres I visited appeared to be well managed, and they seemed to have no problem communicating with and collecting information from the villages they serve. So I suggested to the Minister that he might consider establishing a "situation room" close to his own office that could more closely monitor the maternal deaths situation across the entire country. I am very pleased to see that this idea has been translated into action so quickly.
Why, you might ask, would a WHO Regional Director and several of his senior officials travel to Cambodia to help launch a Situation Room? The answer is simple: This is an important event. In fact, when I visited WHO Headquarters in Geneva last month for the annual meeting of the WHO Executive Board, I mentioned this initiative to our Director-General, who expressed her enthusiastic support, as did many of our Geneva-based colleagues working in maternal health.
Why is this initiative so important?
First, it once again demonstrates the commitment of the Government of Cambodia, with the support of the Prime Minister and the Minister of Health, to tackle maternal deaths with a creative and innovative approach. It is a commitment that caught the attention not only of the people of Cambodia, but also of the international partners and development agencies working here.
Secondly, this initiative shows that programmes conceived by the Ministry of Health can be propagated through the health system to benefit not only those in the big cities like Phnom Penh but throughout the country which eventually will benefit in district and village level. As a result of the establishment of a Situation Room for Maternal Deaths, Cambodia for the first time will be able to capture actual data at the village and district levels that can be used for an epidemiological analysis of strengths and weaknesses of each district in addressing maternal death ratio.
In conversations I've had with senior health officials from other countries, I've learned that many countries are eager to follow the example Cambodia has set in addressing the problem of maternal deaths.
Those are the reasons I came to Phnom Penh to help launch this new Situation Room.
This kind of innovative approach is exactly what we need not only to tackle the challenge of maternal health and MDG 5, but to take on the challenges we face in meeting the other goals and targets set out in the United Nations Millennium Declaration.
Once again, my congratulations to the Health Minister and to all of the public health officials and health workers who are making their best effort to meet these challenges.
The World Health Organization stands ready to help you not only on the issue of maternal deaths, but on any public health issue.
Thank you for inviting me to participate in this important event.