Accelerated Child Survival
Problems of all kinds threaten kids' lives
© UNICEF/ HQ06-0574/Noorani
SUDAN: A young woman peers through a mosquito net, at a nutrition center in the Abu Shouk camp for displaced people, near El Fasher, capital of North Darfur State. She is at the center with her malnourished infant. UNICEF supports the centre’s supplemental and therapeutic feeding programmes for malnourished children.
Although the 25 countries of sub-Saharan Africa hold little more than 10 percent of the world's population, they account for 44 percent—almost 5 million—of the annual deaths of children under the age of five worldwide.
In countries that bear the world's worst child mortality rates, the real obstacle to survival lies not in one major cause or even a bundle of causes, but in the fact that problems occur all at once, and at every level of society. To make matters more complicated, the combination of obstacles along each child's path to survival differs, from communities to regions and from country to country.
For children of sub-Saharan Africa, the risk of death from not just one but a combination of diseases, such as malaria, measles, diarrhea, dysentery, pneumonia and HIV/AIDS, is present before they are even born. Lack of training and resources, as well as poor government infrastructure, prevent already scarce healthcare workers from reaching sick children or even knowing that they exist, especially in remote areas.
Any one of these factors can threaten a child's life. Together, they guarantee that millions of children will continue to fail to receive the life-giving treatment they need unless these problems are attacked in the same way they occur—swiftly and simultaneously, with a permanent, sustainable, and informed healthcare system that is ready to provide ongoing care.
The traditional assumption has been that building such a system would take a great amount of time and money to have significant impact. These children don't have that time.
UNICEF's Accelerated Child Survival Initiative goes beyond previous notions of what is possible, aiming to save 3.2 million children and build healthcare delivery systems in 25 countries within 4 years, at an average cost of $500 per child — $155 of that total will come from UNICEF donors and $345 from both local and international governments.
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