Commission on Women’s Health in the African Region

Justification for the Commission

Despite the various global and regional efforts to improve women’s health, death of women during child birth remains an unresolved challenge in the African Region. Hardly any progress can be made to improve women’s health without high political commitment by Member States. The health problems of women require multi-sectoral and concerted action and commitment by public and private sectors, nongovernmental organizations, communities, families and women themselves

More recently, Member States and their development partners committed themselves to reducing maternal mortality by three-quarters, between 1990 and 2015 - Millennium Development Goal 5 (MDG 5) during the 2000 Millennium Summit. The 2008 Ouagadougou Declaration on Primary Health Care reiterated the need to strengthen health systems to reduce the unacceptable level of maternal mortality.

However, progress in maternal mortality reduction in Sub-Saharan Africa has stalled. Although a 5.5% of annual average reduction of maternal mortality is required to achieve the Millennium Development Goal 5, the actual annual average reduction over 15 years between 1990 and 2005 was only 0.1%. No country in the African Region is on track to achieving MDG 5.

Against this background, the WHO Regional Committee for Africa, at its fifty-eighth session held in Yaoundé, Cameroun, from 1 – 5 September 2008, adopted AFR/RC58/R1 (48.71 kB) requesting the Regional Director to establish a Commission on Women’s Health.