A new analysis conducted by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has found that millions of children and mothers could be saved from dying each year with less than $5 per person.

Featured in The Lancet on April 9th, the findings suggest that expanding basic health care services – such as nutritional supplements, contraception, and medication for serious illnesses – in 74 low- and middle-income nations could save many lives.

Reports show that these 74 countries account for more than 95 percent of the world’s maternal and child fatalities occur annually. In 2015, roughly six million children under the age of 5 died, as pregnancy-related causes also killed more than 300,000 women across the globe.

Back in September of 2000, world leaders committed to reducing maternal and child mortality by 2015; however, the new numbers fall short of those goals.

In 2000, the Millennium Development Goals called for “a two-thirds reduction in child mortality from 1990 levels and a three-quarters reduction in maternal mortality from 1990 levels.”

Study author Robert Black, Ph.D., at the Department of International Health at the Bloomberg School, said that a vast majority of these deaths could be avoided if affordable solutions were designed for the populations that needed them the most.

Black’s analysis suggested that keeping more mothers and children alive was not such an expensive investment, and it required a minimum cost per person for expanding access to care. Black presented his conclusions at the Consortium of Universities for Global Health conference, San Francisco.

Researchers discovered that reaching 90 percent of the target populations with health care services could end up saving four million lives could every year.

Some of the most critical interventions included in the study are about improving pregnancy and delivery care, treating life-threatening infectious diseases (diarrhea, pneumonia, and malaria), and providing better childhood nutrition.

By offering these services, 1.5 million newborn deaths could be prevented, in addition to 149,000 maternal deaths. They could also avert 849,000 stillbirths, the equivalent of more than a third of all annual stillbirths.

According to the researchers’ estimates, an investment of “$6.2 billion in low-income countries, $12.4 billion in lower-middle-income countries, and $8 billion in upper middle-income countries” would be needed.

While that sounds like a lot, these sums represent an average investment per person of just $4.70 overall. In other words, essential health services could help people who need them the most with less than $5 per person.

The cost of expanding coverage is not a great impediment, either, as community health workers or primary health centers can provide the majority of these services.
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