Saving children under five in three simple steps...

A simple set of interventions like oral rehydration for cases of diarrhoea, bednets to prevent malaria and exclusive breastfeeding can save 16,000 children under five years daily, a report by humanitarian and development agency World Vision reveals.

Commitment to this action alone would save up to six million children under the age of five globally, and half of them would be in Africa.

Diarrhoea, pneumonia and childbirth complications are among preventable causes claiming the lives of most of the 4.5 million children who die annually in Africa alone.

Ninety-nine per cent of nine million preventable child deaths globally are in the developing world, the report says.

It is rare to hear of a child dying from any of these conditions in a rich country.

In just two minutes, 30 children under the age of five will die. Most of them will succumb to preventable causes, such as diarrhoea, pneumonia, childbirth complications and malaria.

These killers will continue to claim children’s lives unabated if governments do not show high-level political leadership on child health and continuously fail to prioritise child wellbeing, the report warns.

“This is more than just a problem facing the developing world. It’s a ‘silent’ emergency. And it is, I believe, the greatest child rights violation of our time,” World Vision’s international president and CEO, Kevin Jenkins, writes in the report. The report will be launched in Nairobi and New York on November 16.

The Indian Ocean tsunami shocked the world when it cost the lives of 216,000 people in December 2004, but more than 40 million children aged five and below have died from readily preventable diseases since then.

Together, the UN Millennium Development Goals on health are farthest off-track, of all the eight development goals.

Time is running out for MDG number four, which seeks to cut child mortality by two thirds by 2015.

Five years from the target date of the MDGs, in a period of economic downturn and political flux, no task demands more immediate and concerted action, and a greater sense of fierce urgency — from governments, donors and civil society — than ending the silent emergency that each year claims the lives of almost nine million children under the age of five.

Sufficient government funding is a necessary condition of providing effective healthcare for children and their families.

Currently, only three of the 30 high-burden countries are spending at least 15 per cent or more of their public expenditure on health.

While not all the 30 high-burden countries are in Africa, this allocation is well below the commitment made by African governments in the Abuja Declaration (2001) to lift health funding to at least 15 per cent of national budgets.