Saving Six Million Children Per Year by 2015 is the
Target
Six million of the 10 million children
who die each year could survive if simple, cheap,
and widely known treatments for diarrhea, pneumonia,
malaria, and other illnesses were given to them,
according to The Lancet medical journal.
Ninety percent of deaths occur
in 42 countries, and more than 50 percent of deaths
occur in just six countries. These new data are helping
focus the Agency efforts where the deaths occur.
One of the goals adopted last year
at the Millennium Development Conference in Johannesburg
was to eliminate most preventable deaths among children
by 2015. But more investment in child healthcare
is needed to reach that goal.
"Child health is a global moral
imperative," said Dr. E. Anne Peterson, Assistant
Administrator for Global Health. "A vicious cycle
of poverty, malnutrition, and infectious diseases
threatens the chance that children will grow up into
healthy and productive adults. Yet we have proven
interventions to prevent these deaths. We are simply
not implementing them at sufficient levels."
"By investing in health, stable
and secure civil societies are built," said Peterson. "Our
challenge is to take these efforts to scale where
most of the deaths are occurring."
USAID is also offering to help
other governments obtain international funding and
make better use of their own resources.
More resources should be spent
on low-cost treatments and on basic health practices
such as breastfeeding that build children's defenses
against illness. USAID, for instance, funds programs
that care for newborns, train midwives, teach preventative
healthcare, and develop vaccines against respiratory
infections.
There are other examples of USAID's
child survival programs.
- In Morocco, USAID helped start a national flour
and oil fortification program. Fortifying food
staples with iron, iodine, or vitamin A can combat
certain diseases for only pennies per person per
year.
- In Cambodia, immunization rates in children jumped
from 46 percent in 1996 to 70 percent in 2001 in
provinces that received aid.
- In Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, and Zambia, a public-private
partnership sold more than 600,000 insecticide-treated
insecticide retreatments in its first five months.
The nets prevent up to 60 percent of malaria deaths
and 40 percent of malaria attacks, especially among
young children and pregnant women.
However, when governments are not
free, or fail to respond to the needs of their people,
countries are much more likely to have high infant
mortality rates, according to the USAID report Foreign
Aid in the National Interest.
USAID is working with the World
Bank and other donors to get health issues into country
Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers so they include
interventions that save the lives of children.
Read
the September 2003 Issue of Frontlines [PDF, 1.9MB]
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