| Michael Bisceglie/US Newswire |
The lives of more than six million children under age 5 could be saved each year if the United States and other rich nations made cost-effective health care tools more widely available in developing countries and focused spending more on areas where they are needed most, according to a new report by Save the Children, a global children's relief and development organization.
In the report, Save the Children calls on Congress and the Administration to increase funding for critical health services such as vaccines and Vitamin A supplements to help save millions of lives.
The report also singles out three key areas where more funding should be focused: saving newborn lives, protecting the health of mothers and reaching the poorest families in developing countries.
"The international health care community agrees that we can save millions of lives by using low-cost, effective tools that are readily available," said Charles MacCormack, president and CEO of Save the Children. "The big question is: We know what works, so why aren't we doing more?"
MacCormack noted that U.S. leadership has made an enormous contribution in saving children's lives over the past two decades, but added that federal funding levels currently fall short of what is needed and threaten to undermine successes achieved to date.
"Almost 30,000 children under age five die each day from preventable or treatable diseases including diarrhea, pneumonia, and measles-that's more than 10 million children annually," MacCormack said. "We can save as many as 6 to 7 million of these children each year, if we had more funding and if the funding focused on areas of greatest need. We know that reducing child mortality results in smaller families, which can help stabilize population growth while also providing more resources for children."
The report notes major gains that could be made as a result of additional assistance. Some examples:
- Oral rehydration therapy helps save 1 million children's lives from diarrhea-related diseases each year, yet as many as 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 one-year dose, 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 annually.
Besides making wider use of these life-saving tools, Save the Children recommends in its report that the United States increase funding levels for child survival, maternal health and voluntary family planning and focus more on three critical areas:
- Saving newborns. Babies in the first 28 days of life have the highest risk of death among all children. The four million deaths annually among newborns now represent 40 percent of all deaths to children under five, yet relatively little attention has been focused on this vulnerable age group.
- 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.
- 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.
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, the report said.
Save the Children is a leading global nonprofit relief and development organization working in more than 40 countries, including the United States. Its mission is to make lasting, positive change in the lives of children in need.