Assessing DFID’s results in improving maternal health

International Development Committee

Parliament’s International Development Committee (IDC), or its ICAI sub-committee, hold hearings on all ICAI reviews. The IDC hearing on DFID’s results in improving maternal health is available to watch online.

ICAI follow-up

ICAI follows up on all of its reviews to check what progress has been made since publication. ICAI’s maternal health follow-up is available to read now.

We kept open the option of returning to the maternal health review again if the publication of the Ending Preventable Deaths Action Plan and the Health Systems Strengthening Position Paper did not go ahead as planned in 2020, or if they were of insufficient quality.

Further follow-up

This further follow-up found that the FCDO has continued to pursue a coherent set of activities related to maternal health, however the key strategies remain unpublished while flagship programmes are being scaled back. We will therefore return to this review again for a third time in next year’s follow-up process, due to be published in summer 2022.

Further follow-up

After returning for a third time to recommendations made in the 2018 review, we are pleased to see the results of a clear, if somewhat slow, learning journey within FCDO on the importance of long-term planning and strategic direction in this area, and of improved results reporting.