One for this week's shopping list - today, save a child's life: with new technology at the heart of Save the Children's biggest global campaign now you can

From today, you can log on to a cutting-edge website that puts you directly in touch with children in a slum in Sierra Leone, or choose to provide a child with a simple life-saving solution just by sending a text

Monday 18 February 2008

Nearly ten million children die every year before their fifth birthday - mostly of diseases the world knows how to prevent or treat. In order to tackle this, Save the Children wants people around the world to take 10 million actions by 2010 for the 10 million children who die every year.

From today, you can join the campaign and text any of the following seven simple solutions:

  • Text NUT to 81819 for £1.50 and Save the Children will buy 1 day's supply of the high-energy, high protein peanut paste which comes wrapped in foil, packed with vitamins and minerals and is specially formulated for severely malnourished children. Malnutrition is linked to more than half of all child deaths. 
  • Text NET to 81819 for £5 and Save the Children promises to deliver a mosquito net straight to a child at risk of catching malaria.  
  • Text WATER to 81819 - your £5 will buy a water filter to provide clean water for children and their families. Using a filter helps remove germs, reducing the chance of catching water-borne diseases like cholera. In severe cases, cholera causes severe diarrhoea that can make a child lose 15% of their body weight in just two hours. 
  • Text BLANKET to 81819 for £5 which buys a micro-fleece blanket to keep children warm and helps stop common colds from getting more serious. Left untreated the cold virus can travel down into a child's lungs and turn into a chest infection. One cosy blanket can help stop a child with a mild cough dying from pneumonia. 
  • Text JAB to 81819 - your £5 will buy vaccinations to protect children from childhood diseases. A course of immunisations means that a child won’t be able to pick up something like measles, one of the biggest preventable child-killing diseases.
  • Text THERM to 81819 - a text for £3 will buy a thermometer that will quickly tell when children are running a dangerous fever. Having a fever is a common symptom of killer childhood illnesses and using a thermometer makes it easy to tell if a child' temperature is worryingly high. Getting to these illnesses early stops something like measles becoming fatal.
  • Text SALTS  to 81819 - a text  for £1 will pay for oral rehydration salts to help children recover from diarrhoea. This basic mix of sugar, salt and water replaces electrolytes (the salts that help your cells function) and fluid lost during diarrhoea. Without it children quickly become dehydrated putting such a strain on internal organs that they can quickly fall into a fatal coma.
  • You can also join our online global petition to demand world leaders play their part in saving children's lives.

The campaign is being backed by a range of high profile supporters, including TV presenter Davina McCall who has just returned from Bangladesh with Save the Children. Bangladesh is a success story as despite being one of the poorest countries in the world it has made a big impact on the number of children dying in the country.

McCall said: "Bangladesh has managed to reduce their child mortality rate by 40%. That's literally saving millions of lives." 
 
Other high profile supporters have lent their support with photography highlighting the importance of life-saving mosquito nets. These supporters include David And Carrie Grant, Hugh Dancy, Adrian Chiles, Christine Bleakley, Hugh Quarshie, David Threlfall and Mariella Frostrup. Save the Children can supply images.

With its new fully interactive website Save the Children is inviting its supporters to visit Kroo Bay, a slum built on a rubbish dump at the neck of the filthy Crocodile River in Freetown, Sierra Leone. With one in four children dying before their fifth birthday it is one of the toughest places in the world for a child to survive.

The website will allow families to ask the residents of Kroo Bay questions and experience what life is like for the 4,000 children living in the slum. Visitors will be able to navigate around 360-degree images of the site, and catch up with the latest news from the slum through regular 'webisodes'.

The charity aims to highlight that it is simple for families in the UK to make a difference and as the months go by, the public will be able to watch the changes their donations have made for the residents of Kroo Bay happening on their computer screens.

Al Bangura, the Sierra Leonean Watford midfielder is supporting the Kroo Bay website. He said: "I know only too well how tough the conditions really are for children in areas like Kroo Bay, without the very basics that are needed to keep them safe. This is why I appreciate what Save the Children is doing -the online campaign is a much needed alternative lifeline."


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Notes to Editors

For more information, a fact sheet on Kroo Bay and its residents or details of the text message campaign please call Rosie Jordan in Save the Children’s media unit on 020 7012 6850 or 07831 650 409 (mobile for out of hours). You can email her on r.jordan@savethechildren.org.uk
Save the Children can supply images.