2021 MHTF Annual Report: Strengthening Health System Resilience in the COVID-19 Era

In 2021, the Maternal and Newborn Health Thematic Fund (MHTF) continued to catalyze progress towards achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in ending preventable maternal and newborn deaths. It further helped build health system resilience as the COVID-19 pandemic continued to rage with new emerging variants. Following a focused people-centered, rights-based, life course approach, it delivered integrated and comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services to mothers and newborns across 32 MHTF supported countries with some of the highest rates of maternal and newborn mortality and morbidity.

Together with upstream policy work, the MHTF took steps towards realizing the vision of universal health coverage by strengthening health systems, improving the quality of midwifery care, emergency obstetric and neonatal care (EmONC) and maternal and perinatal death surveillance and response (MPDSR); and preventing and treating fistula to ensure that the poorest of the poor can fulfill their basic human right to a healthy life.