A group of philanthropies including the Gates Foundation has set up a fund backed with nearly $500-million to help save the lives of newborn babies and mothers in sub-Saharan Africa, standing out against a bleak global health funding landscape.

The Beginnings Fund was launched on Tuesday in Abu Dhabi, the home of another key backer - the United Arab Emirates' recently established Mohamed Bin Zayed Foundation for Humanity. 

The project has been in the works for at least a year. But its role has become more important as governments worldwide follow the US in pulling back from international aid, its chief executive Alice Kang’ethe told Reuters in an interview.  

“It is an opportune moment,” she said earlier this month, stressing that the fund aimed to work alongside African governments, experts and organisations rather than parachuting in experts or technologies, an approach she said differed from many traditional donor programmes. 

"Two generations ago... women in the UAE used to die during childbirth. More than half of children did not survive past childhood," said Tala Al Ramahi at the Mohamed Bin Zayed Foundation, saying the lessons learned in what worked to change those outcomes would help inform the effort.  

The Beginnings Fund aims to save the lives of 300 000 mothers and newborn babies by 2030, and expand quality care for 34-million mothers and babies. 

The partners also pledged $100-million in direct investments in maternal and child health, separate to the fund.

It plans to operate in Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Lesotho, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zimbabwe, focusing on low-cost interventions and personnel in high-burden hospitals. The work will track and target the key reasons babies and mothers die, including infection, severe bleeding for mothers, and respiratory distress for infants.

The world has made major progress in reducing newborn and maternal deaths, halving the neonatal mortality rate between 1990 and 2022. But that progress has stagnated or even reversed in nearly all regions in the last few years, according to the World Health Organization, which has warned that aid cuts could make this worse.  

“Mothers and newborns should not be dying from causes we know how to prevent,” said Dr. Mekdes Daba, minister of health for Ethiopia, stressing that the majority of deaths are avoidable.  

Kang’ethe said the Beginnings Fund, like other philanthropies, was getting calls to fill gaps in global aid funding, but remained focused on its long-term aim of changing the trajectory of mother and newborn survival.

The fund is also backed by the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, Delta Philanthropies and the ELMA Foundation, among others. It will be led from Nairobi, Kenya.