OTTAWA -- Prime Minister Stephen Harper says Canada will host an international summit on maternal, newborn and child health in Toronto at the end of May.
He says the summit builds on the work Canada began at the Muskoka G8 meeting in 2010.
That meeting backed a five-year, multibillion-dollar program to improve the health of mothers and children in developing countries.
The Toronto meeting will bring together experts from governments, international organizations, charitable foundations and the private sector to measure progress to date and look at future directions.
The Prime Minister's Office says it will look at ways to strengthen health systems and vital statistics systems and to build partnerships with the private sector to take advantage of innovation.
The Muskoka Initiative, as it is called, is forecast to save hundreds of thousands of children and mothers over its five-year span.
The PMO says progress is being made and the number of women who die each year during pregnancy or childbirth has dropped to 287,000 in 2011 from 543,000 deaths in 1990.
It says deaths among children under have fallen to 6.6 million in 2012 from nearly 12 million in 1990.
"Saving the lives of mothers and children is not only a moral imperative, it is also the foundation for building prosperous communities for this generation and the next," Harper said in a statement.
