Acting on the Call: Ending Preventable Child and Maternal Deaths Report

The U.S. Agency for International Development's (USAID's) 2014 Acting on the Call Report formulated country-specific plans for working with partners in 24 priority countries to save the lives of mothers and children. The follow-up 2015 Acting on the Call Report provided country-by-country progress updates with new recommendations for reaching 38 million women with increased access to high-quality health services around the time of delivery.

USAID's 2016 Acting on the Call Report builds on the 2014 and 2015 Reports with new updates on progress made over the past year in 24 priority countries, which together now account for more than two-thirds of child and maternal deaths worldwide. This year, USAID introduced Burma as the 25th priority country, and preliminary data is provided in the 2016 report.

For the first time, the 2016 Acting on the Call Report further outlines how, with a new emphasis on the equitable access to health services, we can save the lives of 8 million women and children in the bottom 2 wealth quintiles alone – the poorest 40 percent of the population – by 2020. The Report examines the underlying causes of inequity across maternal and health services and examines how to accelerate progress toward ending preventable child and maternal deaths through an equity-based approach.