Harper Vows to Improve Maternal Health Care System

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

Canada: Oye! Times readers Get FREE $30 to spend on Amazon, Walmart…
USA: Oye! Times readers Get FREE $30 to spend on Amazon, Walmart…

Prime Minister Stephen Harper was invited to open a summit on maternal and child health with a goal to seek renewed global funding to help vulnerable women and children, in light of concerns that safe abortion and family planning have not received enough attention in the government’s plan.

Addressing the audience, Mr. Harper alleged that he intends to push to keep the health of mothers and children on the global development agenda after 2015, i.e. when Canada’s current funding commitment expires. The three-day summit being hosted in Toronto is aimed to make global efforts to significantly reduce the number of mothers and children who die each year through various methods including improvement of access to vaccines, better nutrition and health care session with the leader of a Canadian non-governmental organization and the president of Tanzania. In his remarks, Mr. Harper claimed to have first become involved in the issue because he believed focusing on children and mothers was both the right thing to do and could achieve important results. He mentioned that “we know what the interventions are that can greatly reduce maternal and child mortality,” and that “with the right focus and concentration of efforts and accountability for resources, we believe we can make a real difference.”

On the other hand, NGOs and opposition MPs have complained about lesser funding for safe abortions. Many said they would also like to see more funding put into family planning, to help give women more control over how they space out pregnancies.