“I ask you to think about orphan children not as a burden but as a great opportunity.
Their education and wellbeing is an investment in our future.”
– Angelina Jolie, Honorary Chairperson of GAC
Does child’s survival matter to you?
Today, almost 25,205 children under age five will die mostly from preventable or treatable causes. This is a loss of over nine million children each year. A majority of these child deaths are from everyday conditions. For instance, pneumonia, treatable with less than one dollar worth of antibiotics, accounts for almost one of every five deaths among children under age five each year. Diarrhea, treatable with far less than a Dollar (about 6 cents’) worth of oral rehydration salts, causes 17% of young children’s deaths. And more than one third of child deaths result from complications related to birth, a cluster of causes that includes tetanus, which is preventable with a $1.20 tetanus vaccine for the mother during pregnancy.
Africa, particularly Nigeria, is one among other places where the greatest number of under five child deaths [where between 257 and 270 children die for every 1,000 live births] occurs in the world! Children who have been raised in physically and emotionally nurturing environments will be more likely to survive and less likely to succumb to illness and disease. They will be more likely to develop intellectually and socially, allowing them to better contribute to society in the future.
The need to focus attention on child survival funding and programming in developing countries now cannot be overemphasized. A recent report stressed that child survival resource needs are disproportional to the level of funding that these programs receive. In fact, if both rich and poor children received the full grouping of essential health care programs, 6.1 million children’s lives would be saved yearly.
What is the current situation?
Every year, more than 200 million children under five do not receive basic health care and, as a result, over nine million children die annually, mostly from preventable and/or treatable diseases. More than 25,000 children die every day, and every minute, a woman dies in childbirth. Contrary to popular belief, the biggest killers of children worldwide are newborn complications, pneumonia, diarrhea, and malaria.
In many parts of Nigeria like in some other countries, especially where child marriage is prevalent, the lack of primary education and lack of access to healthcare contribute significantly to child and maternal mortality statistics. Very often, girls are taken out of school in order to perform household duties and are often considered to be a financial burden upon their parents. Some families choose to marry off their young girls in order to receive the largest possible bridal dowry, as younger girls receive a higher bride price.
In the 2006 report, Pathfinder International noted that "women who have completed their secondary education are more likely to delay pregnancy, receive prenatal and postnatal care, and have their births attended by qualified medical practitioners. Children born to these women are more likely to receive all the necessary childhood vaccinations, stay healthier than children born to women without formal education and be taken to health care facilities when they are sick." UNICEF also notes that discrimination and exclusion of access to health and nutrition services due to poverty, geographic and political marginalization is a factor in mortality rates as well.
........to be continued
nice work prof
ReplyDelete