4TH GLOBAL CONFERENCECOPENHAGEN, DENMARK

16 – 19 MAY, 2016

REPORT

The 2016 West Africa Regional Caucus meetng at the fourth Women Deliver with the theme advancing the health and productivity of women and girls in West Africa, aimed

to identify opportunities for collaboration, discuss advocacy priorities and strategies for increased commitment to the health and wellbeing of girls and women in the region.

With support from PATH, HACEY Health Initiative brought together diverse stakeholders from the sub-region to share perspectives on major priorities and opportunities for joined up working in the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) pertaining to women and girls.

Different perspectives on improving the health and productivity of females in the region were brought to fore through speeches, a panel session and a question and answers session. Focus was made on political will, education, health literacy and policy implementation. Referrals were also made to existing global and regional policy mechanisms such as the Sustainable Development Goals, the Global strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescent Health (2016 - 2030) and the African Union’s Agenda 2063 as frameworks that provide opportunities for every stakeholder to demand for accountability on the health and rights of women and girls in the region.

A major highlight of the meeting was the panel discussion which focussed on “leveraging cross sectoral partnership to advance the health and productivity of women and girls across West Africa”. Panellist included a parliamentarian from Ghana; Honourable William Sabi, A non profit leader; Theresa Effa – Country Coordinator of Champions for Change and Lena Hothes, First Secretary on Health, Danish Embassy in Ghana.

Overview

The West Africa Regional Caucus Meeting was held on the 19th of May, 2016 at the Bella Center in Copenhagen Denmark from 10:30am to 12:00 noon. It was well attended by high level stake-

holders from nine West African countries comprising of Ministers, Par-liamentarians, Heads of regional partnerships, policy makers and young people.

The keynote address was made by The Executive Governor of Ondo State, Nigeria represented by the Honourable Commissioner of Health of the State. The highlight of his address was the impactful story of the State’s “ABIYE” program which had helped reduce maternal deaths by more than half in the state.

The opening remark during the meeting was made by the President and Founder of Wellbeing Foundaton, Mrs Toyin Saraki. She said

“Political will can help us a lot in achieving our desired goal of ensuring that pregnancy is not a death sentence and we can do that in West Africa”.

Her remark was followed by a panel discussion which focussed on “le-veraging cross sectoral partnership to advance the health and productiv-ity of women and girls across West Africa”. Panellist included a parlia-mentarian from Ghana; Honourable William Sabi, A non profit leader; Theresa Effa – Country Coordinator of Champions for Change and Lena Hothes, First Secretary on Health, Danish Embassy in Ghana.

West Africa Regional Caucus Meeting

Cross section of partcipants

The opening remark during the meeting was made by the Pres-ident and Founder of Wellbeing Foundaton, Mrs Toyin Saraki. She said

“Political will can help us a lot in achieving our desired goal of en-suring that pregnancy is not a death sentence and we can do that in West Africa”.

Her remark was followed by a panel discussion which focussed on “leveraging cross sectoral partnership to advance the health and

productivity of women and girls across West Africa”. Panellist included a parliamentarian from Ghana; Honourable William Sabi, A non profit leader; Theresa Effa – Country Coordinator of Champions for Change and Lena Hothes, First Secretary on Health, Danish Embassy in Ghana.

Major Outcome of the Caucus Meeting

Cross section of partcipants

Commitments

A commitment letter with specific actions for stakeholders was signed by 90% of participant (see annex

material for copy of call to action)

In addition to the signing of the commit-ment letter, Her Excellency Toyin Saraki, Founder of the Wellbeing Foundation, Keynote Speaker at the meeting and wife of the Nigerian Senate President, stated her continued commitment and focus on the achievement of SDG 3 for health and wellbeing for all ages and SDG 5 for gender equality and equity. Her Excellency also committed to holding the Nigerian govern-ment to the promise of providing 10,000 Primary Health Care Centres and called for governments to endeavour to register every pregnant woman.

Also, she made a call to participant most especially policy makers, parliamentari-ans and government representatives to commit to 12 investments opportunities to improve maternal, newborn and adoles-cent health in the region. These include:

1. Improve maternal and newborn health

and nutrition since health cannot be measured without the right nutrition

2. Meet demand for modern contracep-tion and reproductive health.

3. Respect, protect and fulfill, sexual health and rights; bringing the discus-sion on sexual health into the open domain.

4. Ensure access to comprehensive health services.

5. Dramatically Reduce sexual based violence and harmful practices which includes FGM

6. Ensure Equitable and quality education at all levels

7. Boost women’s economic empower-ment

8. Strengthen women’s political participa-tion and decision making power

9. Accelerate access to resources i.e land, clean water and sanitation

10. Invest in women to tackle climate change and conserve the environment

11. Improve data and accountability for girls, women and everyone. registering every pregnant woman

12. Build Sustainable financing and partner-ships for girls and women

Major Outcome of the Caucus Meeting

Mrs. Toyin Saraki deliverying her speech

Major Outcome of the Caucus Meeting

Best Practice on improving maternal and child health shared at the meetingBest practice on ways to effectively implement programmes aimed at improving maternal health across the region was shared by the Governor of Ondo State, Nigeria, represented by the Commissioner for Health, Dr Ade-dayo Adeyanju. The commissioner gave a presentation on the Challeng-es and opportunities for stakeholders to deliver on RMNCAH in West Africa using the novel Safe Motherhood project implemented in Ondo State, South West Nigeria called “Abiye”.

He itemized the characteristic of the region, noting that West Africa though full of potential and oppor-tunities to improve the health and wellbeing of women and girls is plagued with high maternal mor-tality. He emphasized the need for political will in the development and

implementation of impactful inter-ventions, stating that with political will in the mix, there will definitely be a way to improve the lives of women and children in the region. Political will, therefore makes it easy to yield results.

He further stated that political will enabled the Abiye program to be put in place. The success of this interven-tion over the last 6 years, has led to a sharp reduction of maternal mortality in the State. From 745 per 100, 000 live births in 2009 to 106 per 100,000 live births in 2015 and with about 14,802 of pregnant women referred in the first 2 years of implementation; this laudable achievement indicates that the MDGs, though seeming-ly unreachable was achieved in a South-western state Of Nigeria.

Dr Adedayo Adeyanju Commissioner for Health representing the Governor of Ondo State,Nigeria deliverying his speech

Cross section of partcipants

Major Outcome of the Caucus Meeting

Major strategies employed in the safe motherhood pro-gram include;• Improved skilled attendants using health rangers/community exten-

sion workers to track pregnant women in the community and link them to skilled attendants;

• Countered the delays that contribute to maternal mortality by plac-ing pregnant women in call user groups with health rangers;

• Confidential Enquiry into Maternal death was put in place and made mandatory in the state to lay the foundation for getting data for the recording of the death of every pregnant woman.

• Partnership between Traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs) and the Safe Motherhood (Abiye) intervention: Cash incentives were given to TBAs for every patient referred to the hospitals. The TBAs were empowered with other career choices and soft loans. Thereby their profession as TBAs became self exiting.

• Legal element was introduced to aid implementation. A law was enacted to penalise any TBA who ventured into taking a delivery of a baby that led to either the death of the mother or the baby. Other strategies employed include; seamless supply of vaccines, multi-sec-toral approach to Adolescent health and health information.

Future Joint Advocacy Efforts

FUTURE JOINT ADVOCACY EFFORTS• Establishment of a regional platform for sharing of best practices

online hosted on the HACEY micro site. This platform will be used to exchange knowledge and build capacity of stakeholders across sectors for collective advocacy.

• Explore the possibility of creating a regional alliance focused on advancing the maternal and sexual and reproductive health and right of women and girls in West Africa. This alliance will consist of members from private sector, civil society organisation and govern-ment agencies.

COMPELLING QUOTES“Education is intrinsically linked to health for all members of the family from birth to childhoods to adolescents to motherhood and hopefully old age. Heath literacy thus is the difference between life and death for everyone on earth most importantly to Africans.” – HE Toyin Saraki

“Political will can help us a lot in achieving our desired goal in West Africa such that pregnancy is not a death sentence for women” – Dr Adedayo Adeyanju

Partnership is key but no partnership without youth organisations and no partnership without youth professionals – Joanne Bewa

Development partners need to study government programs and design their interventions in line with that for harmonisation, accountability and continuity of actions aimed at improving health outcomes of wom-en and girls– William Sabi

“We need to explore proper health insurance so as to make people more health seeking instead of illness treating. It’s cheaper, more

effective and it keeps your population well.” - William Sabi

“Getting involved in the policy development is key rather than just being the beneficiaries to ensure relevant aspects for each constituency are taken into consideration” – Paul Ojajuni

“CSO need to harness their voices, leverage on their resources and skills to provide a common platform and speak with one voice to address the needs that they want their governments to address regarding improv-ing maternal health across West Africa” – Theresa Effa

Caucus Communications

CAUCUS COMMUNICATIONSFacebook updates and Tweets were sent out using #WAfricaWD.

Press releases from national and regional journal-ists were also developed

Interviews of Keynote speakers and caucus orga-nizers were conducted by Daily Trust Newspaper, Nigeria

AFTER-ACTION PLANS: • Caucus meeting materials have been inter-

preted for the francophone countries.

• We hope to communicate with all participants of the caucus meeting at least 3 times in the next 6 months with report of the caucus meeting, outcome documents and outcome of meeting with major stakeholders from the region.

• We will hold meetings with the West African Civil Society Forum, West African Civil Society Institute, Private Sector Health Alliance of Nigeria and International Youth Alliance for Family Planning to explore the possibility of creating a regional alliance focused on ad-vancing maternal and sexual and reproductive health of women and girls in West Africa.

Event in Numbers

113 people

Representing 8 West African countries

5 donor Agencies

4 members of parliament

7 private sector companies’ representatives

94 delegates signed call to action to advance the maternal and reproductive health of women and girls in West Africa