LONDON: A group of philanthropies including the Gates Foundation has set up a fund backed with nearly $500 million to help save the lives of newborn babies and mothers in sub-Saharan Africa, standing out against a bleak global health funding landscape.
The Beginnings Fund was launched on Tuesday in Abu Dhabi, the home of another key backer — the United Arab Emirates’ recently established Mohamed Bin Zayed Foundation for Humanity. The project has been in the works for at least a year. But its role has become more important as governments worldwide follow the US in pulling back from international aid, its chief executive Alice Kang’ethe told Reuters in an interview.
“It is an opportune moment,” she said earlier this month, stressing that the fund aimed to work alongside African governments, experts and organizations rather than parachuting in experts or technologies, an approach she said differed from many traditional donor programs.
“Two generations ago... women in the UAE used to die during childbirth. More than half of children did not survive past childhood,” said Tala Al Ramahi at the Mohamed Bin Zayed Foundation, saying the lessons learned in what worked to change those outcomes would help inform the effort.
The Beginnings Fund aims to save the lives of 300,000 mothers and newborn babies by 2030, and expand quality care for 34 million mothers and babies.
The partners also pledged $100 million in direct investments in maternal and child health, separate to the fund.
It plans to operate in Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Lesotho, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zimbabwe, focusing on low-cost interventions and personnel in high-burden hospitals. The work will track and target the key reasons babies and mothers die, including infection, severe bleeding for mothers, and respiratory distress for infants. The world has made major progress in reducing newborn and maternal deaths, halving the neonatal mortality rate between 1990 and 2022. But that progress has stagnated or even reversed in nearly all regions in the last few years, according to the World Health Organization, which has warned that aid cuts could make this worse.
“Mothers and newborns should not be dying from causes we know how to prevent,” said Dr. Mekdes Daba, minister of health for Ethiopia, stressing that the majority of deaths are avoidable.
Kang’ethe said the Beginnings Fund, like other philanthropies, was getting calls to fill gaps in global aid funding, but remained focused on its long-term aim of changing the trajectory of mother and newborn survival.
The fund is also backed by the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, Delta Philanthropies and the ELMA Foundation, among others. It will be led from Nairobi, Kenya.
UAE and Gates Foundation launch $500m maternal health fund for Africa
https://arab.news/85yvh
UAE and Gates Foundation launch $500m maternal health fund for Africa
- Beginnings Fund will help save lives of newborn babies and mothers in sub-Saharan Africa
- Mohamed Bin Zayed Foundation for Humanity launches the fund in Abu Dhabi
US lawmakers press Israel to probe strike on reporters in Lebanon
- “The IDF has made no effort, none, to seriously investigate this incident,” Welch said
- Collins called for Washington to publicly acknowledge the attack in which an American citizen was injured
WASHINGTON: Several Democratic lawmakers called Thursday for the Israeli and US governments to fully investigate a deadly 2023 attack by the Israeli military on journalists in southern Lebanon.
The October 13, 2023 airstrike killed Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah and wounded six other reporters, including two from AFP — video journalist Dylan Collins and photographer Christina Assi, who lost her leg.
“We expect the Israeli government to conduct an investigation that meets the international standards and to hold accountable those people who did this,” Senator Peter Welch told a news conference, with Collins by his side.
The lawmaker from Collins’s home state of Vermont said he had been pushing for answers for two years, first from the administration of Democratic president Joe Biden and now from the Republican White House of Donald Trump.
The Israeli government has “stonewalled at every single turn,” Welch added.
“With the Israeli government, we have been extremely patient, and we have done everything we reasonably can to obtain answers and accountability,” he said.
“The IDF has made no effort, none, to seriously investigate this incident,” Welch said, referring to the Israeli military, adding that it has told his office its investigation into the incident is closed.
Collins called for Washington to publicly acknowledge the attack in which an American citizen was injured.
“But I’d also like them to put pressure on their greatest ally in the Middle East, the Israeli government, to bring the perpetrators to account,” he said, echoing the lawmakers who called the attack a “war crime.”
“We’re not letting it go,” Vermont congresswoman Becca Balint said. “It doesn’t matter how long they stonewall us.”
AFP conducted an independent investigation which concluded that two Israeli 120mm tank shells were fired from the Jordeikh area in Israel.
The findings were corroborated by other international probes, including investigations conducted by Reuters, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders.
Unlike Welch’s assertion Thursday that the Israeli probe was over, the IDF told AFP in October that “findings regarding the event have not yet been concluded.”
