& çâÌæÚUæð´ ·¤è ¥ôÚU Îð¹Ùæ ÁæÚUè ÚU¹ð´ ¥ÍæüÌ ¥ÂÙð ÜÿØ ÂÚU ŠØæÙ ÚU¹ð´Ð ãæÚU Ù ×æÙð´, €UØô´ç·¤ ·¤æ× ·¤ÚUÙð âð ¥æÂ·¤ô ©gðàØ ·¤è Âýæç# ãôÌè ãñ ¥õÚU ÁèßÙ ·¤æ ¹æÜèÂÙ ÎêÚU ãôÌæ ãñÐ ÖÜð ãè ÁèßÙ ×ð´ ç·¤ÌÙè Öè ·¤çÆÙæ§ü €UØô´ Ù ¥æ°, çÁ™ææâæ ¥õÚU ©ˆâæã ÕÙæ° ÚU¹ð´Ð ŠØæÙ ÚU¹ð´, ÜÿØ ã×ðàææ ¥æÂ·Ô¤ Âæâ ãôÌð ãñ´ çÁ‹ãð´ ÂæÙð ·Ô¤ çÜ° ÂýØæâ ¥æÂ ·¤Öè Öè àæéM¤ ·¤ÚU â·¤Ìð ãñ´Ð

No Child Left Behind

Shumon Sengupta
EVERY child is precious and every child has the inherent right to life. Everyone of us parents, care-givers. Government, NGOs, civil society, the media and even the man on the street has the responsibility to ensure that every child survives.
In Bangladesh. 2-14.000 children die yearly before reaching their 5th birthday. primarily from causes that are easily preventable. They die of diarrhea, pneumonia, complications in newborns etc., often complicated by malnutrition, etc. conditions that we can now treat but were once deadly.
So in theory, we can now save 28 Bangladeshi children every hour. The question is. how?
The idea of a Child Survival Revolution formally surfaced at the 1978 Conference on Primary Health Care held in Alma-Ata, USSR, which was attended by government representatives, health providers and development workers from around
the world. It resulted in the path-breaking document, "The Declaration of Alma-Ata." This declaration asserts that health is a fundamental human right and that responsibility for assuring this human right through the provision of primary health care lies not only with the citizens, but also with the governments that represent them.
The Declaration notes that attaining the highest possible level of health "is a world-wide social goal whose realisation requires the action of many other social and economic sectors, in addition to the health sector."
What followed this declaration closely was a Unicef-led, more practical approach to saving newborn and child lives. Given the limitations of our resources and commitments, more selective and practical primary health care packages were proposed that prioritised smaller, more attainable health objectives. And this did save millions of lives.
While the child survival revolution
did focus on appropriate, life-saving technical interventions, it did not adequately emphasise on the need to address the underlying social, political, cultural, institutional and economic determinants that contribute to new born and child mortality, particularly in developing countries. It is therefore not surprising that there has been rising levels of malnutrition and slow decline in infant and child mortality rates in many countries because real per capita government health expenditures have actually declined or remained alarmingly low in many countries.
In 2000, the world's governments' vowed to cut down the number of children dying before their fifth birth day by two- thirds. This is what came to be known as the United Nations Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 4. Innumerous steps have been taken to ensure that even the developing countries are able to meet this goal, especially since nearly all child deaths 99 percent occur in developing countries. Sub-Saharan Africa
accounts for around 4.8 million of all child deaths, while around 3.1 million are in South Asia.
But tragically, the fact remains that across the world, in 2009 over 9 million children will die from disease and causes we can treat and prevent. Moreover, recent world events have made reaching the MDG targets seem even more unattainable. According to Save the Children estimates, it's children in the developing world, including Bangladesh, who arc most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, rising food and fuel costs have already forced millions more families into poverty, and could undo decades of progress and most alarmingly, the global financial downturn threatens to hit the children in the developing world hardest and put even more children's lives at risk.
For the full version of this article please read this month's
Forum, available free with The Daily Star on October 5
Shumon Sengupta Is Country Director, Save the Children UK.