Ahead of the U.N. General Assembly’s 68th session and its general debate on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) — “Post-2015 Development Agenda: Setting the Stage” (September 24-October 2, 2013) — the Huffington Post’s “Global Motherhood” and “Impact” blogs posted separate series of opinion pieces addressing maternal and child health. The following is a summary of pieces published as part of the series over the weekend.

• Anne Goddard, “Impact” blog: “While more women are receiving prenatal care [globally] — up by almost 20 percent since 1990 — only one out of every two women in developing countries are getting proper levels of health care,” Goddard, president and CEO of ChildFund International, writes, adding, “If progress is to continue, we must enhance access to care, especially for women in rural areas who often live long distances from the nearest medical facility or professional health care worker” (9/20).
• Lucy Martinez Sullivan, “Impact” blog: “When we talk about ways the world can help end preventable child deaths, we have to pay greater attention to malnutrition — the cause of almost half of all deaths of children under age five. But as we think about how to tackle the pervasive and deadly problem of child malnutrition, we have to put greater focus on the nutrition of mothers,” Sullivan, executive director of the 1,000 Days initiative, writes (9/20).
• Carole Presern, “Global Motherhood” blog: Noting “almost seven million women and children die each year — largely from preventable causes and at shockingly high levels in many parts of the world where poverty, conflict and gender disparities remain firmly entrenched,” Presern, executive director of the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health (PMNCH), highlights a new report from [PMNCH] — “The PMNCH 2013 Report: Analyzing Progress on Commitments to the Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health” — which she says “shows that more organizations, governments and the private sector are making commitments to improve women’s and children’s health every year, and that those commitments are being followed up with real action” (9/22).
• Caroline Shakwei Sawe Mbindyo, “Global Motherhood” blog: Mbindyo, program manager of eHealth at AMREF, examines how eLearning — “electronic learning” through the use of electronic media/technology — and mobile learning “are transforming health delivery in developing countries, offering new skills to so many more health workers, mostly female, in remote, hard-to-reach places where the majority of African populations reside.” She highlights a program supported by AMREF, Accenture, Kenya’s Ministry of Health, the Nursing Council of Kenya, Kenya Medical Training Colleges, and a handful of private and faith-based nursing schools in Kenya, which aims to address health workforce shortages in the country (9/20).