Falling aid for reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health in the lead-up to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Summary box

Greater investment in reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health (RMNCH) is needed to mitigate the negative effects of COVID-19 and avoid a reversal of recent gains in RMNCH coverage and outcomes.

Aid for RMNCH as a whole fell by 6% between 2017 and 2018 and only increased by 2% in 2019; over the same 2-year period, aid for the reproductive health of non-pregnant women fell by 25%.

Volatile and falling aid for RMNCH may have rendered RMNCH systems more fragile in the 2 years preceding the COVID-19 pandemic.

We encourage everyone—academics, advocates and policy makers—to explore and exploit the Muskoka2 aid for RMNCH dataset and other aid datasets, as part of efforts to improve RMNCH outcomes.