Welcome and Day Two Opening Plenary

Resiliency in the Face of the Pandemic: Government Responses to Maintaining and Adapting MNH Services during COVID-19—Insights to Mitigate Future Disruptions

Next, moderator, Dr. Mickey Chopra led a discussion of key findings of the impact of COVID-19 on MNH and the learning from various strategies used for prioritizing MNH during the pandemic through the lens of health systems strengthening, resilience, and addressing inequities that have only been exacerbated by the pandemic. Panelists further discussed how to keep MNH high on the agenda post-COVID.

Moderator: Dr. Mickey Chopra, Global Solutions Lead for Service Delivery, World Bank Group

Panelist include:

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Stillbirths: Data and Parent Voices to End Preventable Deaths

New estimates released in October 2020 reported that about 2 million babies were stillborn in 2019. These, the first United Nations joint stillbirth estimates by the United Nations Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation, have shone the spotlight on this neglected tragedy. However, global estimates are just the first step. Despite the preventability of the majority of stillbirths and increasing recognition of the importance of prevention, progress to end these deaths has been slow. The impact of stillbirth reaches far beyond the loss of life. In all settings, stillbirth profoundly impacts affected women, their families, health care workers, and the wider community, yet all too often, parents and families are left out of the conversation when planning interventions to reduce deaths and improve care for those affected, and little support is available. The Parent Voice Initiative recently found over 600 parent support organizations for stillbirth globally; however, only 15% of these were in Africa or Asia where the majority of stillbirths occur. Urgent action is needed to strengthen programmatic approaches and data systems to provide high-quality care throughout pregnancy and childbirth, toward ending preventable stillbirths and improving care after a death. In this session, a presentation was given on the latest global stillbirth estimates (2000 to 2019). Affected parents and public health professionals then talked about their personal experience of stillbirth and what is needed from the global MNH community to end preventable deaths.

Moderator:Dr. Hannah Blencowe, Associate Professor, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

Panelist include:

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Maternal and Perinatal Death Surveillance and Response Implementation at Country Level

A Critical Element for Improving Quality of Care

The World Health Organization and partners are working together to strengthen implementation of maternal and perinatal death surveillance and response (MPDSR) to improve health services and preempt future maternal and perinatal deaths. This session gave an overview of the latest evidence on MPDSR, discussed the recently published scoping review and conceptual framework, and explored key implementation lessons from the 58 studies in 24 low- and middle-income countries spanning 15 years. The session also looked at the experiences and lessons learned from community-based MPDSR in Bangladesh. During this session, panelists actively sought audience contributions on what the World Health Organization, partners, and policymakers can do to ensure further improvement and implementation of the MPDSR cycle at the country and global levels.

Dr. Allisyn Moran delivered pre-recorded remarks during this session.

Moderator:Dr. Willibald Zeck, Global Maternal and Newborn Health Thematic Fund Coordinator
United Nations Population Fund

Panelist include:

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Establishing Inpatient Care

Lessons Learned to Inform Quality of Care for Small and Sick Newborns

Although the Every Newborn Action Plan coverage targets 2020–2025 have specific national and subnational targets for coverage of care for small and sick newborns (i.e., > 80% of districts have at least one level 2 inpatient unit to provide respiratory support for small and sick newborns, including positive airway pressure), much of the evidence is hard to find and there is a major gap for how to provide this care, especially across varying contexts. This session started with a presentation of the state of the evidence and an introduction to the NEST360° Implementation Toolkit for Small and Sick Newborn Care—a collaborative global resource to help identify existing gaps in evidence and implementation.

This is followed by a country-led panel discussion with key maternal and newborn stakeholders from Ethiopia, India, Malawi, and Rwanda, centered around country case study findings. Panelists discussed specific strategies used, the innovations required in each setting, the role of the built environment in providing quality care, and their vision for achieving the new standards of care for small and sick newborns. This session provided a timely opportunity to share these learnings and help inform the development of models to operationalize the small and sick newborn standards of care in countries that are embarking on this journey.

Panelist include:

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Closing Plenary and Closing Remarks

The Road Ahead: Collective Action to Accelerate Progress—Improving MNH Outcomes while Providing People-Centered Care

Dr. Tlaleng Mofokeng provided the Closing Remarks on Day One of the Opening Forum.

The closing plenary from Day Two looked at  Ending Preventable  Maternal  Mortality  and  the Every Newborn Action Plan coverage targets, milestones, and measurements from global, national, and community perspectives, and highlight voices from the What Women Want campaign run by the White Ribbon Alliance. Panelists addressed questions around how the MNH community can come together to track progress, shared successes, and supported one another to address challenges and accelerate positive change. Later on, to end our two-day Forum, we heard from Dr. Jeffery Smith, Ms. Anita Gibson, and Dr. Aparajita Gogoi who provided closing remarks and a look ahead.

Moderator: Dr. David Ntirushwa, Obstetricians and Gynecology,
Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Kigali, Rwanda

Speakers include:

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