That the House:

(1)   applauds the Government’s increase of total health funding in the foreign aid budget and an increase in spending to maternal, newborn and child health, which is much needed when in our region, including South Asia, 200,000 mothers and 3.2 million children are dying every year from preventable causes;

(2)   notes that:

(a)   Australia still requires an increase in total health funding in the foreign aid budget to progress toward the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 4 and 5 by 2015;

(b)   Millennium Development Goal 4 to reduce child mortality by two-thirds and MDG 5 to reduce maternal mortality by three-quarters have made the slowest progress of all MDGs and are off-track to being achieved by 2015;

(c)   Millennium Development Goal 5 has made virtually no progress globally and has reversed in most of sub-Saharan Africa in the last 20 years—it is the only MDG not making progress of any significance;

(d)   the health MDGs are achievable but require increased effort and greater cooperation from all developing and developed countries; and

(e)   evidence indicates that successful proven, cost effective strategies exist that can reduce child deaths by at least 60 per cent and maternal deaths by 75 per cent, which would save the lives of 240,000 children and 26,000 mothers in our immediate region each year;

(3)   acknowledges the importance of the Australian Government increasing its support for health systems in the Asia Pacific region and in Africa (though coordinated mechanisms including the International Health Partnership) to ensure that adequate, coordinated, long term and predictable donor resources are available to support effective basic and reproductive health plans and systems in each developing country in our region; and

(4)   recognises that:

(a)   greater focus must be placed on training health professionals and midwives to ensure significant reductions in newborn, child and maternal mortality;

(b)   system strengthening must also be ensured to provide incentives for staff to be retained in countries and areas of need; and

(c)   an increase in Australian support for maternal and child health related spending is required to support the provision of basic health services and strengthened health systems; and that this will demonstrate Australia’s leadership and commitment to ending the preventable deaths of children and mothers globally.