A health worker wraps a baby born minutes earlier as the mother looks on at the government maternity hospital in Katmandu, Nepal. (Gemunu Amarasinghe/Associated Press)

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is headed to Geneva on Tuesday morning to co-chair a new UN accountability commission on child and maternal health in the Third World.

The work with the United Nations Commission on Information and Accountability for Women's and Children's Health also involves Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete.

The new commission, which will oversee $40-billion worth of international pledges, aims to accelerate progress in reaching a UN goal of reducing maternal and child mortality in the developing world by 75 per cent.

During last summer's G8 summit in Muskoka, Ont., Canada agreed to donate $1.1 billion for the initiative.

Over the weekend, Harper told party faithful that maternal health is one of the government's key priorities. The key driving principle, Harper said, is accountability in dispersing aid dollars.

"Helping save the lives of mothers and children in the developing world — it is all about principled leadership."

At a briefing in advance of the prime minister's trip, Harper's spokesman, Dimitri Soudas, said the aim is to complete a common reporting mechanism by May for the combined G8 and UN Millennium Development Summit's maternal health projects.

'A bit of hocus pocus'?

Harper's role in Geneva is to "kick start" and focus the process, and explain how Canada is going to measure progress and how it wants everybody to measure it.

But the international aid sector is divided on whether the commission will be able to ensure success on the ground where it's needed.

"This commission ... is a bit of hocus pocus," said Stephen Lewis, former Canadian ambassador to the UN. "You don't need all the accountability and all the arithmetic. You just need a serious international politician, well-placed to make sure the countries are applying the money to reduce maternal and child mortality."

But Bridget Lynch, Canadian president of the International Confederation of Midwives, praised the initiative.

"In order to do this, we need accountability. We need to know that the monies being spent are doing the right thing, that they're actually improving health care at the community level. And I think that it's really a coup for Canada."

Lynch said several developing nations have begun to take maternal and child health seriously as a barometer of their overall development and that Canada is well-placed to keep that momentum going.

With files from The Canadian Press