Saving children

Sobeda, a mother in India, never had the chance to name her baby. Instead, her child died within the first week of birth without a name.

Each year millions of newborns like Sobeda’s child die without a name. The reason: death rates among infants remain so alarmingly high in many of the world’s poorest countries that it has become a tradition not to name children until they are at least 1 month old.

Addressing the staggering death rates among newborns — and also improving maternal health care and reaching out to the poorest of the poor—are three key areas that the United States and other rich nations need to address immediately if we are to make new inroads saving more lives of children under 5.

While U.S. leadership has made an enormous contribution in saving children’s lives over the past two decades, federal funding levels currently fall short of what is needed and threaten to undermine successes achieved to date, according to a new report on child survival by Save the Children.

Worldwide, almost 30,000 children under age 5 are dying every day — that’s more than 10 million children a year — nearly all from preventable or treatable conditions like diarrhea, pneumonia, measles and malaria. Malnutrition contributes to half of these deaths.

With low-cost, effective tools that already exist, and with adequate funding, we could save between 6 million to 7 million of these children each year. Saving these lives should be an urgent budget priority this year for Congress and the administration. Yet few in Washington are talking about increasing funding for child survival.

Consider the gains we could make:

• Oral rehydration therapy currently helps save 1 million children’s lives from diarrhea-related diseases each year. Yet up to 3 million lives a year could be saved using this simple, cost-effective tool on a wider basis.

• Vitamin A supplements, which cost only a few cents for a year’s dosages for one, saved another million in just the two years between 1998 and 2000. Yet only 50 percent of children under 5 in developing countries receive these life-saving supplements.

• Antibiotics to treat pneumonia can cost as little as 15 cents. Yet lack of access to drugs contributes to more than 3 million deaths to children under 5 each year.

• Just $15 will immunize a child against six major childhood diseases. Yet more than 30 million children are not reached with these services each year.

Besides making wider use of these life-saving tools, Save the Children recommends that the United States increase funding levels for child survival, maternal health and voluntary family planning and focus more on three critical areas:

(1) Saving newborns. Babies in the first 28 days of life have the highest risk of death among all children. The 4 million deaths annually among newborns now represent 40 percent of all deaths to children under 5, yet relatively little attention has been focused on this vulnerable age group.

(2) Protecting the health of mothers. When mothers survive and thrive, their children survive and thrive. Yet a mother dies every minute somewhere in the world from complications of pregnancy and childbirth. That’s more than 500,000 deaths each year. Most of these deaths could be prevented with access to basic health services such as emergency obstetric care and to modern contraception so women can delay or space their births at intervals that are healthy for them and their babies.

(3) Reaching the poorest. Many of the world’s poorest children and their mothers have not benefited from earlier child survival successes.

The gap in child death rates continues to widen between rich and poor countries, and there are huge disparities in child death rates between the wealthy and the poor within countries.

Since taking office, President Bush has launched two encouraging foreign assistance initiatives — the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) and the HIV/AIDS Initiative. Unfortunately, neither program will do much to increase the survival of the world’s youngest and poorest.

MCA funding is limited — the majority of the 42 countries in which 90 percent of child deaths occur may not be eligible for MCA funding.

While HIV/AIDS is emerging as a major cause of death in many countries — and the president’s AIDS Initiative is an enormous step forward — it will only help address the 3 percent of all child deaths under 5 that are caused by HIV/AIDS.

By increasing foreign assistance for child survival, maternal health and voluntary family planning programs — and focusing these funds in areas where they are needed most — the administration and Congress can maintain our nation’s role as a global leader in helping children survive their earliest years.

What’s more, we will give mothers around the world like Sobeda a chance not only to name their children but also to raise them in a healthier world.

David Oot is director of health at Save the Children, a global children’s relief and development organization, and is chairman of the U.S. Coalition for Child Survival.