The Gates Foundation, along with a team of other philanthropies, has launched a $500 million initiative dubbed the Beginnings Fund to combat maternal and newborn deaths in ten African countries.
Launched on Tuesday in Abu Dhabi, this fund aims to prevent over 300,000 deaths and enhance the quality of care for 34 million mothers and babies across the Sub-Saharan region by 2030.
Key supporters of the Beginnings Fund include the Gates Fund, UAE’s Mohamed Bin Zaye Foundation for Humanity, Delta Philanthropies, the ELMA Foundation, Molly and Bill Ford, and the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation.
Maternal and newborn mortality is one of the most significant health challenges in Africa, having a profound impact on families and communities. Without transformative interventions, 182,000 women and 1.2 million newborns in Africa will continue to die each year, in addition to 950,000 stillbirths.
The fund will operate in ten countries: Ethiopia, Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Malawi, Lesotho, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe. It will provide funding for initiatives and organizations focused on strengthening the maternal and newborn health workforce.
Also, the fund will make targeted investments in initiatives to strengthen data and referral systems to facilitate timely and effective care for moms and babies.
The launch of this fund is particularly noteworthy as it bucks the trend of declining donor government foreign aid budgets. The U.S. and several other governments worldwide are pulling back from international aid.
These aid cuts are already severely impacting essential healthcare in many parts of the world, leading to facility closures, loss of health workers, and disruptions in the supply of life-saving medicines for maternal and newborn care.
The World Health Organization (WHO) warned that these cuts threaten the progress made in ending newborn and maternal deaths.
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