World Health Day 2005 – Make every mother and child count

Motherhood is a positive and fulfilling experience for most women. Childhood should be a time of joy, growth and healthy development. Pregnancy and childbirth, however, can also be associated with suffering, ill health and death. The WHO European Region still shows wide differences between and within countries in illness and death in mothers and newborn babies, and in their access to and the quality of care.

The four messages of World Health Day

• Healthy mothers and children are the real wealth of societies.
• Too many mothers and children suffer and die each year in pregnancy, childbirth and early childhood. Just a handful of preventable and treatable conditions are to blame.
• Using knowledge available today could save millions of lives. The challenge is to transform this knowledge into action.
• To make a difference, everyone must join forces and act. Each one of us has a role to play.