This morning in the Capitol, a number of us from the Global Network and Sabin Vaccine Institute participated in a breakfast reception capping off a week’s worth of events around World Pneumonia Day. The speakers themselves were thoughtful, engaging, and succinct (a beautiful thing in this city). Senator Bill Frist, involved through his work with Save the Children and Hope Through Healing Hands, spoke about the need for public private partnerships around pneumonia and other maternal child health interventions; he also urged the community to keep pushing bills like S.1966, the Global Child Survival Act of 2009, for co-sponsors and ‘teachable moments’ with staff around the issues. Rep. Carol Shea-Porter, whose resolution recognizing World Pneumonia Day passed this week, was also on hand to advocate for continued pneumonia awareness, urging advocates to ‘be the conscience’ for Representatives on maternal child health. Finally, Dr. Orin Levine–a leading pneumonia advocate and member of PACE–spoke movingly about how appalling it is to have pneumonia kill so many children each year when known solutions are cheap and available.
But as I sat there drinking my coffee, I was struck by two thoughts tertiary to the event itself:
- The Mansfield Room, in which the reception was held, is like many rooms in the Capitol in that its appearance conveys a sense of grandeur and gravitas. To be in that room discussing maternal child health issues signaled to me that we have come a long way in bringing these issues to the fore as important, urgent matters for key policymakers
- At the Global Network, it is easy to fall into an NTD-focused mindset. Yet an event like today’s, focused primarily on pneumonia, was remarkably relevant to the work we are doing around maternal child health as a broader platform. Even the messaging–”cheap interventions, proven solutions, a need for partnership to deliver treatments in the field…”–echoed the messages we recite daily with respect to NTDs. As we move forward with our policy and advocacy work, it serves both the NTD and the broad MCH communities well to exploit such overlap to the benefit of millions of mothers and children around the world.
