In 2000, the world made a promise that we’d cut child mortality by two-thirds by 2015. With less than 500 days to go until the deadline of the Millennium Development Goals, we must now face the fact that we have failed the world’s vulnerable mothers and families, and worse, their future children. Thankfully, we have halved under-five mortality and accelerated the rate of improvement, and organisations like UNICEF have invested heavily to reach the most vulnerable and to care for every child, everywhere, but it has not yet been enough. A UNICEF report, out this week, suggests that at this rate we won’t meet our Millennium Development Goal to cut under-five mortality until 2026, 11 years behind schedule. Yet we have the tools to end these preventable child deaths. We have the global will, and still one child under the age of five dies every single second – about the time it took you to read this paragraph - from something as preventable as a bout of measles, or diarrhoea caused by dirty unsafe water, or because a skilled health worker wasn’t present at their birth. Globally, women and children are not receiving the support and services they need to give birth safely. Experts agree the presence of a skilled birth attendant to assist a woman in labour can lower the risk of harm to the mother, as well as lowering the risk of stillbirth and neonatal death by 20 per cent. Despite this, almost one in three pregnant women gives birth without a skilled birth attendant and many completely alone. For them, there’s no care before birth or after birth and none of the care I’ve seen for women to help them with breastfeeding advice or immunisation schedules to prevent common childhood illnesses. Many of the solutions are incredibly simple. Blood tests, folic acid supplementation and immunisation can effectively prevent problems from occurring before, during and after birth, and substantially reduce mortality rates. Initiating breastfeeding within one hour of birth can reduce the risk of neonatal death by 44 per cent with no financial cost. By ensuring all women, everywhere have access to a skilled birth attendant, we can dramatically cut new-born and under-five mortality. But interventions alone are not enough - government commitment is key. It has been 25 years since the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, of which our government is a signatory. Recognition of child rights strongly correlates to child health and survival, and those rights reflect access to health, to education and to care and protection. It’s no accident that the commitment and successes in child survival and the commitment to children’s rights are so closely entwined. With that in mind, it is crucial that child rights remain squarely on the agenda, along with maternal and child survival. ~LA dailylife.au/news-and-views/dl-opinion/unless-we-take-action-our-goals-on-child-survival-will-not-be-met-20140916-3fust.html
Posted on: Wed, 17 Sep 2014 03:49:00 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015