The Need

Recent WHO statistics highlight a staggering deficiency in global healthcare delivery: the majority of maternal and child deaths occurring in the developing world are preventable through basic and inexpensive health interventions. In terms of the cost to human life, every day 1500 women die from pregnancy- or childbirth-related complications and just under twenty-five thousand children under the age of five die from diarrhea, pneumonia, and other preventable diseases.

Measures to preempt these complications and illnesses exist in abundance, but are often unavailable in areas off the beaten path. Basic primary healthcare services are not accessible to millions of mothers and their children worldwide, and the situation is most urgent in rural areas. The national health systems in developing countries are largely inadequate and fail to meet even the most basic health needs of citizens. The hospitals and medical facilities do exist are often overcrowded and dilapidated, lacking the medicine, equipment and health professionals to provide care and treatment.

The international community has arrived at an incontrovertible conclusion: health is a human right. This principle has been defined in multiple United Nations documents including, most significantly, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 25 codifies these rights:

(i.) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and

(ii.) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance.

Despite decades of foreign aid, the efforts of hundreds of thousands of non-governmental organizations, and attempts by national governments to reform and decentralize health systems, these human rights go unmet

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have commanded an even more urgent imperative – that global development inequities can and should be redressed by 2015, if only for the political will, organized efforts, and the unqualified commitment of UN member states.

MDGs 4, 5, and 6 pertain directly to this health imperative. But in most of the world, progress in achieving the MDGs has been slow and cumbersome. While there are some bright spots – worldwide measles deaths of children under 5 years old have dropped by over 68% – the majority of the world’s poor are being left behind.

The facts are clear: simple interventions save lives. Bridging the global health gap is a matter of access and education. Critical medical interventions, such as childhood vaccines, are available. But mothers and children living in rural, underserved communities don’t have access to simple, life-saving medicines.

The C2C intervention directly targets this need: access and education. C2C health clinics will be implemented in underserved communities – communities to which the national health systems simply don’t have adequate reach. Our central programming targets women and children. C2C provides for childhood vaccinations, safe pregnancy and maternal health, treatment for infectious diseases, and robust community health education and training.