The parliamentary conference on maternal and newborn health and survival entitled “Ensuring access to health for all women and newborn: the role of parliaments”, provided a forum for members of parliament from developing and developed countries to exchange experiences, map out next steps and strengthen parliamentary cooperation to reduce maternal and child mortality.

The meeting focused on ways of ensuring that all segments of society, especially the most underprivileged and removed communities, have access to health facilities, one of the basic prerequisites to reducing maternal and newborn mortality. The main objective of the meeting was to agree on commitments for parliamentarians to achieve MDGs 4-newborn (reduce child mortality) and 5 (improve maternal health) by 2015. The meeting built on the results of previous conferences organised for parliaments on maternal and newborn health, the last one being the conference held in the Hague in 2008.