Project News

The project organized two online side meetings of Prince Mahidol Award Conference (PMAC) 2022. The second side meeting "Protect our Future: Mitigating the impact of COVID-19 on Maternal and Child Health" was held on 21 December 2021.

The COVID-19 pandemic is posing great challenges for maternal and child health both directly and indirectly. The most grievous direct impact is maternal death. One of significant indirect impacts is disruption of health service. Decrease in antenatal clinic attendance as well as utilization of pediatric care and routine health services such as growth monitoring and vaccination is observed in various parts of the world. Along with a sub-theme of the PMAC 2022 "Learning from the COVID-19 Pandemic to Better Prepare for Tomorrow's Challenges", the side meeting aimed to review direct and indirect impact of COVID-19 pandemic to maternal and child health; to share lessons during the crisis in the protection of maternal and child health with participating countries; and to identify policy implications on how to respond quicker to protect pregnant women and children from the COVID-19 and any future pandemics.

Five country presenters from Thailand, Lao PDR, Japan, Cambodia, and Vietnam shared their efforts and remaining challenges of each country to protect mothers and children. Insightful reflection was provided by a Thai expert, followed by a fruitful panel discussion. The audiences also actively participated in the webinar by positing questions. The meeting highlighted some keys to success in protecting maternal and child health under pandemic conditions as how to develop resilient and efficient MCH service delivery system; how to strengthen the database system of mother and child; how to improve the quality of healthcare including capacity of healthcare providers; how to strengthen local community and local government on the primary health care, and how to achieve community involvement for protection of mother and child health.

We would like to thank all the participants, panelists and organizers for joining and supporting this side meeting, and we also would like to express our sincere gratitude to the PMAC Secretariat for providing us the opportunity to connect with people from all over the world.

You can watch the video recording on the PMAC 2022 website:

• https://pmac2022.com/activity/16/sidemeetingOnline/detail (external link)