Female health volunteers win govt accolade

Himalayan News Service

KATHMANDU: The government hailed female community health volunteers for their exceptional role to achieve success in reducing maternal mortality and under-five mortality rate of children, which earned Millennium Development Goals Award from the United Nations in September for Nepal. The two outstanding achievements are called MDGs 4 and 5.

In a letter to his Norwegian counterpart Jens Stoltenberg, Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal praised the female community health volunteers for their outstanding performance of providing health education and motivating parents to use life-saving health services, which helped Nepal reduce MMR by an impressive 67 per cent and under-five mortality rate by 62 per cent.

Stoltenberg, lauding the significant progress made by Nepal MDGs 4 and 5, had urged PM Nepal to send a report on Nepal’s success in meeting MDGs in the two areas and the Nepal’s future plans for maintaining continuity. The Norwegian Prime Minister and the UN General Secretary are going to publish a profile of the countries that have achieved MDGs 4 and 5.

“Our report will be published in a compiled book to be brought out jointly by the UN and Norway,” Rajan Bhattarai, PM’s foreign affairs adviser told this daily.

In the letter, PM Nepal expressed hope that Nepal would be able to continue to meet the MDGs with the support from the donor communities.

Extolling the foreign support, PM Nepal in his letter said, “ With such enhanced support from the donors, we expect to accelerate our efforts to achieve MDGs 4 and 5. We are also committed to all the other MDGs, to fulfill our shared commitment to the United Nations Secretary-General’s Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health.”

Nepal bagged the Millennium Development Goals Award from the United Nations for its exceptional progress towards reducing maternal mortality and achieving MDG 5.

Between 1990 and 2006, Nepal’s maternal mortality rate has declined by an impressive 67 per cent, from 850 to 281 per 100,000 live births. During the same period, under-five mortality rate declined by 62 per cent, from 162 to 61 deaths per 1,000 live births. For this Nepal received the award for the highest average annual rate of reduction of child mortality since 1990 among all 72 The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI) countries at the fourth GAVI Partners Forum in Hanoi in November 2009.