By Anita Sharma for the United Nations Foundation.

The devastating earthquake that rocked Nepal this past April reverberated across the world in a surge of support for the more than 600,000 households affected. Startling images flooded the global media, but one of the most poignant was the rescue of the 10-year old girl and her 5 month-old brother, whose cries were heard by soldiers pulling away wreckage. For many not personally affected by Nepal, this footage of a desperate mother and her trapped children forged a personal connection and drove home the individual impact a disaster can have on a family. The mother, who was reunited with her children, and all those less fortunate, are never far from our minds at the United Nations’ Every Woman Every Child campaign. That’s why the UN and the more than 300 partners from around the world are committed to preventing early death, particularly those most vulnerable: women and their children.

At Every Woman Every Child, we spend our days fighting to both save women and children’s lives while empowering them so they can prosper. The Every Woman Every Child movement mobilizes and intensifies international and national action to address the major health challenges facing women and children. Launched by Ban Ki-moon at the UN in 2010, Every Woman Every Child facilitates commitments from private sector, government, and civil society partners worldwide to get medical care to the most destitute, rural sections of the world to help save millions of lives.

Maternal and child health is vitally important; women are the backbone of families and societies and children are the future. This year is especially monumental for international development, with the adoption of the new Sustainable Development Goals, also known as the global goals, this September at the UN General Assembly meeting in New York. As the UN works to roll out the new global goals, the Every Woman Every Child movement is working to map out the next phase of its strategy. Goals for the next 15 years will focus on women, children and adolescents’ health, and we believe improving access to reproductive maternal healthcare, working to end child marriage, and protecting women and girls’ rights are all achievable. Fragile settings, including disasters and conflict areas, will be an integral aspect of the new strategy, as the increasing needs like access to medicine of women and girls and children in these areas makes this work crucial.

From Nepal, to Syria, to South Sudan, global humanitarian crises are on the rise, affecting nearly 80 million people in 2014.  What’s more, 75 percent of people affected by humanitarian crises in this past year were women and children. Humanitarian relief must be our focus point. What’s even more startling is that more than half of these deaths are actually preventable, simply by making healthcare for pregnant women, mothers, children and adolescents more accessible in these regions. An emphasis on humanitarian response helps to promote human rights while providing women and children with the basic life-saving healthcare and the protection that they need. We know that meeting reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health needs, and human rights in humanitarian contexts, reducing preventable deaths of women and children, as well as avoiding and responding to gender-based violence, are critical for the resilience and more rapid recovery of affected communities overall.

In addition to these preventable deaths, women and girls’ lives can be drastically improved through a greater emphasis on support for victims of sexual violence, who face unwanted pregnancy and long term health complications. Child marriages are prevalent in these hard-hit, hard-to-reach areas, exponentially increasing the danger of girls and women becoming victims of violence and abuse, as well as suffering from obstetric complications, long term physical, and psychological impacts. Many women, children and adolescents in crisis areas don’t have simple access to healthcare, like obstetricians or pediatricians and medicines, and die from preventable causes. This is a cause where we can make a real difference by increasing access to emergency obstetric care, providing support for sexual violence survivors, and providing additional resources to meet child healthcare needs.

For too long, development and humanitarian relief work have been separated.

For too long, development and humanitarian relief work have been separated. The model of these concepts as two distinct projects is not the solution for a better world for women and children everywhere. Empowering women, children and adolescents will lead to sustainable growth and lay the foundation for peace and stability. Ignoring maternal and child health needs deteriorates society and hinders progress. The answer is no longer development or humanitarian relief work. Rather, the answer is development through humanitarian relief work.

We are taking this opportunity to help mark the seventh World Humanitarian Day on 19th August. The United Nations, the UN Foundation and partners are launching #ShareHumanity, a global campaign enabling celebrities, influencers and the general public to use the power of their newsfeed to amplify the real stories behind today’s humanitarian crises.

Join us in bringing maternal and pediatric healthcare to every woman, every child and every adolescent, everywhere by sharing your stories on #ShareHumanity, join the movement on #EWECisME and learn more at www.everywomaneverychild.org