Countdown launched its 2012 Report on June 14, 2012, at the Child Survival Call to Action, a two-day high-level meeting in Washington, D.C. This conference, convened by the governments of the U.S., Ethiopia, and India in collaboration with UNICEF, charted a course toward the end of preventable child deaths around the world.
The 2012 Report, Building a Future for Women and Children, highlights country progress—and obstacles to progress—towards achieving Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5 to reduce child mortality and improve maternal health. It focuses, like previous Countdown reports, on evidence-based solutions—health interventions proven to save lives—and on the health systems, policies, financing and broader contextual factors that affect the equitable delivery of these interventions to women and children. Country profiles for 75 Countdown countries were published together with the report.
News in Countdown’s 2012 Report includes:
- Updates on changes in coverage, globally and at the country level, of key interventions
- Detailed analysis of equity of coverage within countries
- A focus on the determinants of coverage
- Information on the policy, financial, and systems inputs that are needed for progress
- Ways of measuring quality of care
- An introduction to conducting country-level Countdown processes
- A status report on mortality and nutrition
- Evidence on the scale of preterm birth and stillbirths
Countdown’s 2012 Report can be downloaded below, either in its entirety or in its component parts:
Full Report
Full Report (including profiles)[22.07 MB]
Full Report (without profiles)[7.23 MB]
Errata for printed report[374 KB] (Please note that all errors have been corrected in PDF versions available for download on this page.)
Report Sections
Part 1 (pp. i-iv; 1-11) [1.95 MB]
- Introduction
- Headlines for 2012
- About Countdown
- How to use the Country Profile
Part 2 (pp. 13-31) [1.57 MB]
- Progress toward MDGs 4 & 5
- Coverage along the continuum of care
- With features on
- Preterm births and stillbirths
- Pneumonia and diarrhea: neglected killers
- Unsafe abortion: preventable cause of maternal death
- Undernutrition: grave crisis
- Family planning: what it takes to succeed
- Swimming against the population growth tide
- Equity in coverage
Part 3 (pp. 32 – 50) [2.08 MB]
- Determinants of coverage
- Milestones of progress
- Accountability now for MDGs 4 & 5
- With features on:
- Strengthening policies and health systems
- Human resources for health
- Financial resources for RMNCH
- Conflict threatens women’s and children’s health
- Water and sanitation
- Pakistan: delivering services under pressure
- Malawi: community case management
- Success means reaching the poor
- Quality of care counts!
- Countdown’s call to action
- Countdown to success: the “country Countdown”
Country profiles (all) [12.32 MB]
Country profiles (A-K) [6.33 MB]
Country profiles (K-Z) [6.37 MB]
Back matter (annexes, notes, references) [3 MB]
Annexes [215 KB]
- Annex A: Country profile indicators and data sources
- Annex B: Definitions of Countdown indicators
- Annex C: Definitions of policy and health systems indicators
- Annex D: Essential interventions for RMNCH
- Annex E: Countdown priority countries considered to be malaria endemic
- Annex F: Details on estimates from the Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation
Notes and references [191 KB]
Profiles for individual countries, along with country profiles from 2005, 2008, and 2010, and equity country profiles published by Countdown in 2012 and 2010, are available here.
The data and results used to construct Countdown’s 2012 report and profiles are publicly available, and can be downloaded here. For more information about Countdown’s datasets, please contact the Countdown Secretariat at countdown@jhu.edu. The most updated country data on the coverage indicators tracked in Countdown are available at www.childinfo.org.