Why create a child survival partnership?The Child Survival Partnership (CSP) provides a forum for coordinated action to address the major conditions that affect children's health: it enables governments and partners to agree on consistent approaches and stimulates concerted efforts towards their implementation.
 Child Survival in Ethiopia and Cambodia: Stories of partnership activity |
Child Survival is a global imperativeThe child survival revolution of the 1970s and 1980s focused the world’s attention on that fact that approximately one third (29%) of the global burden of disease is in children under 5 years of age and child deaths account for about one fifth (20%) of all deaths occurring annually in the world. There was new visibility for EPI and an incredible progress on reaching children with vaccines. Still each minute today the equivalent of a classroom of children under five years of age dies from preventable or treatable diseases such as pneumonia or measles. Globally, 10.8 million children will lose their lives this year. But six million of these deaths could be averted if well-known, inexpensive treatments for diarrhea, pneumonia, malaria, and other illnesses were scaled up and made available to the children who need them most.The child survival revolution saved the lives of millions of children around the world. However in the past decade progress has stalled and, in many instances, reversed. Child mortality in some countries is actually increasing. In 2004, about 11 million children below five years of age will die due to causes that are mostly preventable or treatable. Most of these deaths are concentrated in the world’s poorest countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and South East Asia. Problems of the newborn, pneumonia, diarrhoea, malaria, malnutrition and measles are the most common killers, with pediatric AIDS taking its toll in some countries. The irony is that interventions to prevent these deaths are cheap, effective and can be delivered at high levels of coverage even in resource-poor settings. These deaths do not have to occur. Clearly, nations striving to make progress in health and development must make the health of their children a priority. Children die because they are not reached by the interventions that could save their lives. Data in the State of the World's Children 2003 show that only 39% of infants were exclusively breastfed, 40% of children who needed an antibiotic to treat pneumonia did receive one, a staggeringly low proportion (20%) of children with diarrhoea received Oral Rehydration Therapy and fully 1/3 of all children to not get the basic course of immunizations. There are stark inequalities in child mortality within and between countries, with vast disparities in access to and use of basic child care services between the poorest and the richest segments of populations. |
Rolling Conference on Child Survival, 13-14 December 2005, University of London
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