Harnessing the power of parliamentarians to improve the health and well-being of women, children and adolescents

Commentary on the opinion of Helga Fogstad, CEO of PMNCH, and Martin Chungong, Board Member, PMNCH, and IPU Secretary General.

April 7, 2020

On this World Health Day, occurring in the midst of the largest pandemic the world has seen since the flu of 1918, we are reminded of the central value of healthy people to the functioning of our societies. The current COVID-19 epidemic will have significant health and socio-economic consequences. Despite numerous gender analyzes on the current outbreak, global health players highlight the vulnerability of women and girls associated with disruption to the global contraceptive offering, increased risk associated with their caregiver roles, increased risk of violence and mental health issues. Crises exacerbate inequalities and threaten women, girls and other vulnerable populations. Today, we must work together to continue to prioritize the health of women, children and adolescents.

Members of parliament around the world have a responsibility and play an important role in improving health outcomes. We cannot succeed without them. Therefore, we, the IPU and the Mother, Newborn and Child Health Partnership (PMNCH), urge all actors to step up their efforts and work in partnership with parliamentarians to achieve universal health coverage – prioritizing women, children and adolescents.

How we are

Despite significant gains from 2000 – a 29 percent reduction in maternal mortality and a 43 percent reduction in mortality – Women, children and adolescents continue to face significant health challenges that have become more complex in recent years due to the increasing burden of non-communicable diseases. Today, 295,000 women and 5.9 million children Under-5s continue to die annually from preventable causes, and as more children survive early years and progress into adolescence, they face major health challenges related to maternal conditions, mental health, substance abuse and injury. Also, this progress has not been the same in and within states; the fate of the population is increasingly determined by where they live, how wealthy they are, their gender and the schools they attend – if any.

Improving health outcomes for women, children and adolescents will greatly depend on functional health systems based on an empowered, motivated and supported health workforce that can provide access to appropriate services of the highest quality when and where they are needed. Nurses and midwives play a vital role in health care delivery. They make up over 30 percent of the workforce, are responsible for providing most primary care, and are often the first and only entry into community health care. The World Health Organization estimates that 9 million nurses and midwives are needed to achieve universal health insurance by 2030.

What parliamentarians have committed themselves to do

Parliamentarians can improve the well-being of women, children and adolescents. They pass legislation, approve budgets and activate resources, provide oversight to ensure government accountability and transparency, encourage multisectoral action, ensure national implementation of global commitments, and encourage the participation of constituencies in political discourse.

There is a clear commitment from parliamentarians to improving population health. In 2012, the IPU adopted the first ever resolution on Fr. Access to health as a fundamental right: The role of parliaments in addressing key challenges in ensuring the health of women and children (updated in 2017) addition), and in 2019 the IPU adopted a resolution on Achieving universal health coverage by 2030: The role of parliaments in securing the right to health.

In these resolutions, parliamentarians call for quality health services for women, children, adolescents to be accessible, affordable, affordable and affordable. They urge states to allocate more resources to the employment of healthcare professionals and to funding health care facilities. Parliamentarians pledge to use their functions to create a favorable legal and financial environment to support an effective workforce for women, children and adolescents and to hold the executive to account for better health outcomes.

There is extensive evidence documenting that parliamentarians make huge differences in improving health, including by supporting the strengthening of pillars of the health system, such as the health workforce. In Tanzania, for example, parliamentarians have played an important role in ensuring that health centers in rural areas are supported to improve performance through small grants rather than being closed¹, In Uganda, Parliament blocked the state budget in 2012 and forced the government to increase the health budget to make it accessible to lower-level healthcare providers.

Placing parliamentarians at the center of a health plan for women, children and adolescents

Recognizing the importance of parliamentary leadership in improving health outcomes, IPU and PMNCH have jointly announced a new Roadmap for action on the health of women, children and adolescents, which provides an action-oriented framework to support parliamentarians in their decision-making process. This roadmap is an important tool for building the capacity of parliamentarians in health matters.

The IPU and PMNCH have complemented knowledge sources such as a roadmap for advocacy efforts and capacity building workshops, but long-term and meaningful engagement through multi-stakeholder partnerships needs to be increased.

Evidence suggests that national and subnational multi-stakeholder partnerships that facilitate parliamentarians access to data and information and model legislation can strengthen the frequency and effectiveness of their efforts to improve health outcomes. For example, a recent case study the documents that a multidisciplinary partnership in Italy involving female parliamentarians has succeeded in reducing the rate of caesarean section.

Collaboration between IPU and PMNCH, which can be counted on by more than 1000 partner organizations worldwide, is increasingly focusing on establishing these partnerships to make a real difference in the lives of women, children and adolescents. In these uncertain times, we are calling on the global health community to do the same. We also call on parliamentarians to fulfill their obligations in achieving general health coverage and improving the health of women, children and adolescents. Their voice is needed now more than ever before.

1) Talhiya Yahya and Mohamed Mohamed (2018), “Raising the Mirror on Tanzania’s Quality of Care: Five-Star Assessment,” Commentary, The Lancet, vol. 6, no. 11, p. 1155th