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Home > Key Development Challenges > Health > The Catalytic Initiative to Save a Million Lives

 
 

The Catalytic Initiative to Save a Million Lives

Overview

The Catalytic Initiative to Save a Million Lives (also known as the Catalytic Initiative) brings together an international partnership with the goal of strengthening health systems to accelerate progress on the health-related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The Initiative will strengthen health systems by delivering life-saving health and nutritional services to disadvantaged children and pregnant women to dramatically reduce child and maternal mortality.
Mother holds sick toddler. © UNICEF/Emidio Machiana
Two-and-a-half-year old Maria in seen by a UNICEF-supported health worker in Mozambique.
The international donor partners will work with developing country governments to train/retrain, equip, and deploy grassroots community health workers. With support, these health workers will deliver health interventions such as bed nets, vitamin A supplements and inoculations. Each set of health interventions will be tailored to the specific needs of each developing country partner.

The Catalytic Initiative will broadly focus on developing countries in Africa and Asia. Canadian support will focus on sub-Saharan Africa where half of all the world's child and maternal deaths occur each year. PM Launches Global Initiative to Save a Million Lives on November 26, 2007 while visiting Tanzania.
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Partnerships

The Catalytic Initiative was developed in partnership with the following donor agencies:
  • The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA)
  • UNICEF
  • The Government of Norway
  • The United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
  • AusAID - The Australian Government's overseas aid program
  • The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
  • The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation
  • The World Health Organization (WHO)
  • The World Bank
Each partner may use different programming approaches but there is a shared goal to save a million lives.
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Canada's Contribution

Angela's Story
Angela da Conceição is worried. Her two-and-a-half-year- old daughter, Maria, is ill. In the Xai-Xai District of Mozambique where Angela lives, no one can say if Maria's illness is serious. "She has a high temperature and has been having headaches," says Angela. "It takes me about an hour and twenty minutes to walk to the health post. Very often I do not go there because of lack of money. When a child falls ill I look for medicine in the bush and we remain at home for many days."

Angela's situation is not unique. Developing countries like Mozambique face a chronic shortage of health workers. Every year 9.2 million children die from highly preventable and treatable causes. Many of these children die because they did not have access to basic health services. Maria is lucky. She's getting the help she needs with support from UNICEF.
To date Canada, through the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), has contributed $105 million (2007-2012) to UNICEF for the Initiative. Canada will continue to encourage other partners to join and donate funds.

Canadian funding alone will make basic health services more accessible to the poor and is expected to save 200,000 lives. In addition, Canada's support will prevent disabilities such as mental stunting and blindness caused by malnutrition, and diseases like malaria, in many more children. These results will have a widespread effect on economic productivity and are key to sustainable poverty reduction.

With Canadian support, and coupled with its own funds, UNICEF will work with developing country governments to improve coordination and sustainability of health systems in targeted African countries. Ultimately, this work will strengthen results-based management practices in health systems at national and subnational levels.

Canadian funding will support the following:
  • Train over 40,000 front-line health workers to provide services to children and pregnant women;
  • Promote culturally sensitive strategies to improve women's access to health care; and
  • Deliver affordable, proven health services such as the following:
    • Measles and DPT (diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus) shots to prevent deadly communicable diseases;
    • Insecticide-treated bed nets to protect children under five and pregnant women from malaria;
    • Rehydration therapy to prevent deaths from diarrhea;
    • Antibiotics to fight pneumonia;
    • Drugs to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS;
    • Micronutrients such as vitamin A to fight malnutrition; and
    • Breastfeeding education to new mothers.
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Catalytic Initiative Countries

The health and nutritional services will be delivered in a number of countries. The list of countries is expected to grow as new partners come on board. Some countries are funded by only one donor partner, while others have multiple donor support. The current list of targeted developing countries includes the following:
  • Afghanistan
  • Burkina Faso
  • Benin
  • Ghana*
  • Ethiopia*
  • Malawi*
  • Mali*
  • Mozambique*
  • Niger*
  • Pakistan
  • Tanzania *
*Canadian-supported countries
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Results Achieved to Date

The rollout of the Canadian-funded component of the Initiative is already making a difference in targeted African countries. Here are a few examples:

Malawi

UNICEF is working with the Ministry of Health of Malawi and other partners to train close to 6,000 community health workers in 2008. This training program is part of the government's five-year strategic plan for child survival and development. In addition, Canadian funding was used to purchase key drugs such as anti-malarials, antibiotics, and oral re-hydration salts to be used by local community health workers. This activity will strengthen the much-needed community-based drug supply and management systems in Malawi.

Mozambique

With support from CIDA, UNICEF is making steady progress on improving Mozambique's health systems using a two-pronged approach by:
  1. Providing funding to address immediate gaps identified by the Mozambican Ministry of Health. These include the following: providing treatment for pneumonia, diarrhoea and malaria; giving vaccinations and vitamin A; supplying educational tools for breastfeeding counselling; distributing 400,000 long-lasting insecticide-treated bed nets to pregnant women and children in 2008; and
  2. Facilitating micro-planning at the community level to ensure there is adequate staff, supplies, and transport in place for more effective service delivery.
CIDA and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are both providing support to the Catalytic Initiative efforts in Mozambique. Together, this funding will accelerate the Mozambican government's plans to get high impact health interventions to those in need.

Ghana

In Ghana, Canada's funding will accelerate Ghana's High Impact Rapid Delivery Program by:
  • supporting the training of close to 4,000 additional community health workers;
  • supplying critical drugs to fill in gaps identified by the Government of Ghana. For example, Canadian funds were used to supply 25,000 doses of new anti-malaria drugs (ACTs); and
  • facilitating much-needed education programs on exclusive breastfeeding.
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Principles That Guide the Catalytic Initiative to Save a Million Lives

A clear set of principles guides the donors' efforts to strengthen health systems and dramatically reduce child and maternal deaths. These guiding principles include the following:
  • Strengthening health systems in a harmonized manner to scale up scientifically proven, low-cost maternal, newborn and child health interventions, such as treatment for diarrhea and pneumonia, the leading causes of child mortality.
  • Increasing accountability for results by developing rapid mortality monitoring. The rapid reporting of results, e.g. on an annual basis, could provide early enough notice to make mid-course corrections during the life of the program. Given the scale of this program there is an opportunity to explore rapid or frequent mortality monitoring. It would allow the program to build on successes, spot problems early on and correct them. Rapid mortality monitoring also fosters greater accountability because of improved tracking systems.
  • Funding based on achieved results such as a decrease in mortality rates. Historically, funding has been based on inputs, such as number of bed nets. Under the Catalytic Initiative funding support offered by donors is linked to agreed-upon targets, such as a decrease in mortality rates.

Background

Canada's contribution to the Initiative is one of the main components of the Africa Health Systems Initiative announced by Prime Minister Stephen Harper at the 2006 G8 Summit. This 10-year program will support African-led efforts to strengthen health systems by providing support to train, equip, and deploy new and existing African community health workers. These health workers will make basic health care more accessible to the most vulnerable. Canada's contribution of $105 million towards the Catalytic Initiative to Save a Million Lives is part of Canada's overall $450 investment in African health systems. Canada is on track to double its international aid to Africa from $1.05 billion in 2003-04 to $2.1 billion in 2008-09.
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Related Sites

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If you have comments or questions on this page prepared by Communications Branch, please contact us.
 
 
Date Modified: 2011-11-04
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