The Countdown to 2015 started in 2005 as an initiative from the team that published the Lancet Series on Child Survival 1 in 2003. Cesar Victora, one of the authors, was also a co- founder of the Countdown to 2015: Maternal, Newborn and Child Survival initiative, aimed at monitoring population coverage with effective interventions against the leading causes of death among women and children in low- and middle-income countries.
Countdown to 2015 was a multi-stakeholder initiative aimed at monitoring progress toward the Millennium Development Goals numbers 4 (Child Survival) and 5 (Maternal Health). Different from other initiatives, health equity was paramount to their monitoring effort. Standardized health indicators stratified by all relevant equity dimensions were needed for that.
In 2009, Cesar Victora presented Aluisio Barros with a big challenge: reanalyzing all available MICS and DHS surveys to produce stratified estimates of the MDG indicators. The challenge was accepted, and the International Center for Equity in Health (ICEH) was born as a key Countdown partner.
In a few months, the analysis platform designed to deal with all survey specificities was working, and estimates were being produced. Those estimates were the base for the Countdown Decade Report (2000-2010) published in 2010.
Since then, the ICEH has grown in size and remit, taking a central role in Countdown, supporting its research, training, and dissemination activities. In 2015, Countdown was rebranded to Countdown to 2030 for Women’s, Children’s & Adolescents’ Health when the Sustainable Development Goals were launched. Currently, Countdown’s focus is on groundwork, developing monitoring activities with 25 African countries, along with capacity strengthening through a fellows program for young researchers, and multicountry studies on regional health priorities. Visit the Countdown website for more information, reports, publications and health equity analysis tools.