Health and HIV
It’s the one thing parents cannot bear to imagine - the death of a child. But, in many countries, it's not only imaginable, but likely.
Eight-month-old Jenny with her mother at the Suehn Clinic, Liberia. She was diagnosed with malaria, a big killer of children under the age of five in Africa. We are supporting clinics such as this one to help reduce maternal and child mortality rates.
In 2008, 8.8 million children under the age of five, and half a million women of child-bearing age, died. In sub-Saharan Africa 144 children die before their fifth birthday out of every 1,000 born, and in South Asia it’s 76 per 1,000. This compares with six per 1,000 in the UK.
In Sierra Leone and Afghanistan, one child in four dies before they can reach their fifth birthday, many of them in the first month of life. Most of these deaths are preventable.
A global injustice we have to change
Children die when poverty, poor living conditions, hunger and lack of basic services conspire to destroy lives. They die of:
- basic illnesses, such as pneumonia, when they’re weakened by malnutrition
- diarrhoea, when they can’t get clean water or sanitation
- preventable diseases, when the health system can’t give them vaccinations.
A lack of education for girls means that, when they become mothers, their children are more likely to die. Conflicts and disasters also lead to poor health and high rates of child deaths. We know that influencing these factors will help keep children alive and healthy.
Good health is both an indicator of and a requirement for a country’s development. Communities need their children to survive into adulthood and contribute to its growth.
Children’s right to health
Ensuring children grow up healthy is one of our highest priorities. We’re fighting child deaths, reaching almost 2.2 million children in 21 countries with support to help them access better healthcare and nutrition from 2008 to 2009.
Every day, 1,400 children die from an AIDS-related illness, and another 1,800 are newly infected with HIV. We work to ensure such children are cared for in their communities rather than institutions. We provide advice and social support, and work to increase their access to basic health and education services.
Building better health systems
Basic healthcare should be a right for all, with access to the means to prevent illness and death and treatments to reduce the seriousness of conditions. This universal right should be available to everyone, whether rich or poor, whether living in remote rural areas or in urban areas. If basic healthcare were available for all children and mothers, millions of lives could be saved.
The only means to achieve this in most countries is through comprehensive, government-led healthcare systems with adequate financing and the staff to deliver it. This is why we focus on strengthening the health systems in the developing countries where we work.
How we strengthen health systems
Read about the barriers poor families face to getting healthcare and how to change this, in our briefing Helping Children Survive.
African Union Summit: Leaders, are you listening?
This week, African leaders are meeting in Uganda to discuss maternal and child health. Watch this film in which mothers and health workers from Tanzania, Rwanda, Kenya and Uganda were interviewed to show how simple health solutions have made a real difference to their lives. Will leaders at the African Union summit listen to them and do what it takes to save children's and mother's lives?
Read this blog on the African summit
Healthcare in emergencies
In some countries health services have collapsed because of war or civil disruption. Save the Children provides emergency health services and helps rebuild health infrastructures in war-torn countries like Angola and Liberia.
For example, in Liberia, we helped 102,000 children get free, good-quality healthcare at 21 clinics we support from 2008 to 2009. We carried out nearly 300,000 consultations, most with mothers and children under five, and provided advice and training to the Ministry of Health.
But to end child deaths, we need to do more than just provide services. We need to ensure people’s demands are heard, and acted upon.
