No one expects to find hope in a study of world death rates. But that's exactly what happened.
UNICEF has announced that the death toll of young children dipped below 10 million a year, for the first time on record.
While this is still a staggering number, it should be looked at in perspective. In 1960, the survival rate for children was only 80 per cent. Today, a remarkable 93 per cent of children will survive their fifth birthday. UNICEF executive director Anne Veneman hails the findings as "historic" and "nothing short of epic."
Room for Improvement
Despite the good news from UNICEF, there is still more that needs to be done. One of the UN's Millennium Development Goals is cutting the child mortality rate by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015. At the current rate of progress, however, the global child mortality rate will drop by only one quarter by 2015.
"The world just isn't making progress quickly enough to meet the target," says Dave Toycen, president of World Vision Canada. "World Vision will do all it can to help get this goal back on track." Programs like Survive 5 and Corazon en Familia are part of that strategy.
Survive 5
Partnering with the Canadian International Development Agency, World Vision recently launched Survive 5, a program targeting the five main causes of death in children under five: malnutrition, malaria, vaccine-preventable diseases, pneumonia and diarrhea.
In this program—taking place mainly in sub-Saharan Africa—items like mosquito nets, antibiotics and immunization supplies are distributed to communities in need. Along with this, health workers and community members are trained to help families prevent disease and grow more-nutritious foods.
Corazon en Familia
Latin America represents a real success story when it comes to combating child mortality rates. Here the death rate has dropped by more than 50 per cent since 1990, making it one region on track to achieve the Millennium Development Goal.
And it's partly because of programs like World Vision's Corazon en Familia (Heart of the Family) that there are fewer and fewer deaths.
High up on remote, Peruvian slopes, World Vision is teaching guide mothers about the five food groups and how to supplement traditional diets with necessary vitamins and minerals. These guide mothers, in turn, teach up to nine others through cooking workshops and home visitations.
Margarita Quispe, 41, became a guide mother last year. Now that her own six children are healthy, she regularly climbs the rugged slopes of the Andes to visit other homes.
"I feel so proud after visiting these mothers," she says. "A month later I see that their children are no longer suffering from the same sickness and are even doing better in school."
You can help provide better nutrition for a child in the developing world through World Vision child sponsorship. Click here to learn more.
