Our Focus
Quality of care
Photo © 2023 WHO /—
Attribution to be supplied
Our Focus
Quality of care
Photo © 2023 WHO /—
Attribution to be supplied
There has been an unprecedented improvement in access to essential care and services in the past ten years; yet, women, adolescent girls and babies continue to die at an unacceptable rate during pregnancy, childbirth and the first month after birth.
‘Quite honestly, there can be no universal health coverage without quality care.
– World Health Organization Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Quality health services provide care that is:
The World Health Organization released in 2016 a Maternal, Newborn and Child Health Quality of Care Standards Framework detailing the components of quality care and what it takes to implement it:
Many countries are building quality into their health systems, an arduous process to change at national, subnational and community levels the way health services are designed – with the engagement of the communities they serve – and provided. Link to the quality of care network internal page. Improving quality of care requires:
- Good governance;
- A skilled and competent health workforce that is supported and motivated;
- Financing mechanisms that enable and encourage quality care;
- Medicines, devices and technologies that are available, safe and appropriately regulated;
- Accessible and well-equipped healthcare facilities.
Source: Quality of Care, World Health Organization https://www.who.int/health-topics/quality-of-care.
The impact
- Improved quality of care could save up to 1 million newborn and 150,000 women lives each year*.
- 60% of deaths in low-and-middle income countries from conditions requiring healthcare are due to poor quality care.**
- An estimated 1.8 billion people (24% of the world’s population), live in fragile contexts that struggle to deliver quality essential health services. A large proportion of preventable maternal, childhood and neonatal deaths occur in these settings***.
* The Lancet Global Health Commission on High Quality Health Systems in the SDG Era.
** and *** Key data https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/quality-health-services.
Every Woman Every Newborn Everywhere calls for quality care as an essential step/component to reduce maternal and newborn mortality and stillbirths (Link to the milestones page): in the choice of high impact interventions, in the way these interventions are delivered, and with a strong emphasis on equitable care, to reach also vulnerable and hard-to-reach populations.
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