Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what plans he has to support the World Health Organisations' Ending Preventable Deaths Action Plan.

The UK is committed to working with others to end the preventable deaths of mothers, newborns and children in the developing world by 2030. Pregnancy, childbirth and the early years of life remain a dangerous time in many developing countries. A stillbirth occurs every 16 seconds somewhere in the world, and every year 2.4 million babies die in the first 28 days of life. The majority of these are preventable.

The UK works closely with the World Health Organisation and we are engaged in their Every Newborn Action Plan to end preventable deaths. For example, we recently supported the first-ever UN stillbirth report released this month. The UK supports newborn health through a broad range of country, regional and global programmes. Examples include the Global Financing Facility for Women, Children and Adolescents that supports evidence-driven investments to improve reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health.