A Focus on the Journey to Self-Reliance for Preventing Child and Maternal Deaths . June 2018<br> The 2018 Acting on the Call report focuses on 25 countries’ journeys to self-reliance for preventing child and maternal deaths. Self-reliance is a country’s ability to finance and implement solutions to its own development challenges. Understanding where countries lie on this effort - known as the journey to self-reliance - helps USAID to best partner with countries and support their efforts.<br><br> The report looks at the health status of 25 priority countries as well as the current capacity of the health system to meet the needs of women and children. In the report, we recount progress since the 2012 Call to Action as well as identify gaps in order to inform future programming and areas that need strengthening during the journey to self-reliance. For the first time ever, we’ve calculated the return on our investment to eliminate bottlenecks to improving health services.