Philip Rouwenhorst
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 10 2007 (IPS) – The U.N. children #39s agency UNICEF says that increased cooperation among developing countries is benefiting the lives of poor children around the world, particularly in the critical first months of life.
What we have seen is a very exciting new South-South collaboration in some of the areas of child health, specifically in the last few years, Peter Salama, UNICEF chief of health, told IPS. One of the most exciting is actually around neonatal help.
There #39ve been [community-based] models that have been developed in India, for example, he said. Over the last couple of years, we #39ve seen that a team from India is actually traveling, particularly in East and Southern Africa, to do capacity-building and training in similar community-based models to reduce mortality in the first months of life.
In its Progress for Children report launched Monday, UNICEF highlighted several areas in which progress is being made, but also stressed the importance of more urgent action.
This [report] is new in terms of the large number of countries that this is applicable for. It #39s relevant because it is data that has been taken mainly in 2006, which is roughly halfway through the period of the Millennium Development Goals from 2000 to 2015, said Alan Court, UNICEF chief of programmes.
It gives a very good indication of how the world is doing and how different countries are doing in relation to those goals, he said.
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In 2000, the world #39s countries and major development institutions agreed on eight goals, known as the MDGs, to ease severe poverty and promote environmental conservation by a deadline of 2015.
The MDGs include a 50 percent reduction in extreme poverty and hunger; universal primary education; promotion of gender equality; reduction of child mortality by two-thirds; cutbacks in maternal mortality by three-quarters; combating the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; ensuring environmental sustainability; and developing a North-South global partnership for development.
To achieve the MDGs in the next eight years, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has stressed the growing importance of South-South cooperation.
In his latest report on this trend, Ban noted that, Recent years have witnessed impressive increases in South-South development assistance The stage is set for the ushering in of a new and more participatory form of international cooperation for development.
Reducing child mortality in the first five years of life is one of the major improvements highlighted in the UNICEF report. For the first time in modern history, the annual number of children younger than five who died worldwide fell below 10 million, to 9.7 million a reduction of 60 percent since 1960.
The report shows a significant increase in key survival interventions. For example, children receiving doses of vitamin A, which promotes healthy bone growth and prevents many diseases, increased more than four-fold since 1999.
Many countries in sub-Saharan Africa are expanding the use of insecticide-treated bed nets to prevent malaria infections, with 16 of 20 surveyed at least tripling coverage since 2000. In the 47 countries where 95 percent of measles deaths occur, measles immunisation coverage increased from 57 percent in 1990 to 68 percent in 2006.
There was also a modest reduction in the number of primary-school-age children without access to education. In 2005-2006, 91 million children were out of school, down from 115 million in 2002.
UNICEF also found evidence suggesting a decline of HIV prevalence in some sub-Saharan African countries. Court told IPS that international networking among experts and policymakers was one likely factor.
For instance, there was a forum a week ago in South-Africa looking specifically at mother-to-child transmission, in which there were delegates from many, many countries who shared information on what works and what doesn #39t work. There are mechanisms for that sharing of information and for developing countries to learn from each other rather than necessarily programme jointly, he said.
Almost two-thirds of all people with HIV/AIDS live in sub-Saharan Africa. The report notes that only 11 percent of more than two million pregnant women living with HIV in low- and middle-income countries in 2005 received antiretroviral drugs to prevent them from infecting their babies. Botswana, Brazil and Thailand are among seven countries that gave such drugs to more than 40 percent of pregnant women with HIV.
In low- and middle-income countries, only 15 percent of children under age 15 in need of antiretroviral treatment in 2006 actually received it.
However, Salama told IPS that the news is not all bad. There are many other examples where African countries themselves are really showing strong progress. One of them is Ethiopia, where in the last few years the government has made a very ambitious plan to train 30,000 community health workers.
This model is attracting a lot of interest in southern Africa from surrounding governments because they see this as a potential way to really get around one of our major constraints in progress on the health-related Millennium Development Goals, i.e., cash-strapped public health systems and persistent misconceptions about how to prevent HIV/AIDS.
While Court also pointed to higher rates of exclusive breastfeeding, particularly in West Africa, as helping to lower child death rates, the UNICEF report found little progress in the area of maternal deaths, which total five million women each year.
According to Court, This has been something that #39s been very difficult to move for sometime. This is particularly difficult because the numbers in a sense are not so alarming enough in any one culture to create the kind of crisis approach to dealing with the problem.
Early next year, UNICEF will release its annual State of the World #39s Children Report . Court said it will be looking at community-based approaches to care regarding health-related issues.
This is going to be a major shift and one based on the lessons that we #39ve learned coming from this database. This circulates through in terms of how we work in the United Nations country teams and countries and how we interact with governments.