Personal stories from around the world
Around the world, parents battle to save their young children from preventable illness and disease. Read about challenges children face as they struggle toward their fifth birthdays, and parents’ heartbreak when they don’t make it.
Afghanistan: Saving children through immunization
In a country where one in four children dies before turning five, a father and daughter team is working to protect children through simple vaccination. They’ve got their work cut out for them.
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Armenia: Toddler dies of pneumonia “within a week”
Photographs are all that remain of little Hayarpi, who died from pneumonia when only eighteen months old. World Vision interviews the child’s mother to learn how it happened.
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Bangladesh: Half of preschool-aged children underweight
Malnutrition leaves children unable to battle illness and disease. World Vision is teaching mothers to be leaders in their communities, teaching one another to prepare nutritious food for their children.
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Burundi: Sick children face go without medicine
In Canada, cough, fever and diarrhea are easily cured with a flick of the doctor’s pen. In Burundi, simple medications are beyond the reach of many—and the consequences are often deadly.
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Cambodia: Better nutrition might have saved baby girl
Chantha’s little girl passed away at six weeks from a congenital heart disease. The doctor told the grieving mother that better nutrition could have given her baby the resilience to survive.
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Democratic Republic of the Congo: Witchcraft or malnutrition?
According to the World Health Organization, malnutrition is the biggest contributor to infant and child mortality, present in half of all cases. It nearly claimed that lives of little Zidano and forty other children in his community.
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Honduras: A bellyful of tortillas and worms
On a remote hillside, Grandma Filomena makes tortillas for her grandchildren. Four-year-old Rosbin is sharing his portion with a tummy full of worms. The health clinic is too far away and too expensive.
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Mozambique: Malaria stalks young African children
Malaria kills more children under five than any other disease in Africa. Aside from stealing lives and breaking hearts, malaria is an economic burden on families already struggling to survive.
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Sudan: Cruel clock of early child death
World Vision communicator Dan Teng’o shares the despair he feels interviewing women who have lost up to six children to preventable illness. “The stories are heartbreakingly similar,” he writes.
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