Edinburgh Napier University

  At the time of drafting this piece, there were approximately 3 years and 66 days and 4 hours left to meet the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). MDG 5 specifically focuses on improving maternal health, and the other seven goals clearly intersect with the health of women and children. The decade old promise to reduce maternal deaths by 75 per cent by 2015 remains a distant target with minimal progress over the past 10 years; the annual decrease has been less than 1% far below the annual decline required to achieve MDG 5. Globally, approximately 536,000 women die in pregnancy and childbirth every year - and over 90% of them live and die in the developing world. A new and innovative partnership between the Health Information Systems Research Centre, the College of Medicine and Health and the Centre for Global Development at University College Cork, Ireland and other partners including Mzuzu University, Malawi is hoping to tackle this lack of progress head on using 21st century technology.