Global Week of Action

Monday, May 5, 2014

The fifth birthday of any child marks a very important stage in his life as it paves the way for healthy growth and longer life expectancy. But sadly, every year 6,6 million children across the world die before they reach this age due to preventable diseases. For example, pneumonia claims 2 million children’s lives under five. 60 percent of the causes come from the surrounding environments.

In Mongolia there has been significant progress with the decrease of child mortality in the last 24 years. For example, in 1990 for every 1000 live births, 97,2 died before reaching the age of five. In 2012, figure dropped to 18,9, successfully fulfilling the Millennium Development Goals 1.

Even so, there are challenges ahead. Every year, 1438 children die of preventable diseases - nearly 80 percent of them even before celebrating their first birthday2

As of March 2014, in 10 provinces show a high rate of child mortality among children under the age of five  - higher than the national average of 19,73. Often times, the cause lies in preventable diseases like pneumonia, respiratory diseases and flu4.

Therefore, World Vision has been running a global campaign called Child Health Now for five consecutive years now. The campaign focuses on the promotion of healthy growth of children across the world. This year as part of this activity, the Global Week of Action will be held from May1 through May 8. The main purpose of the activity is to raise the voices of the children who can not get life-saving medical treatments, as they live unsupervised, homeless.

In the framework of this campaign, World Vision Mongolia is joining forces with the Ministry of Health, UNICEF to develop health awareness messages. This is to raise awareness on information on the health services from the government among parents, guardians and public. The messages will be published in print materials, which will be posted at all family clinics and hospitals across the country.

We want every child to live in a safe environment with clean water, nutritious food, quality medicine and adequate health services. We also want children to grow with happiness, freedom, equality. This can be realized with the help of policy makers. If we unite our voices and work together, we can give all children an opportunity to celebrate their fifth birthday healthy and happy.

References

1. Millennium Development Goals – implementation – Fifth national edition, 2013
2. Health minister’s speech, 2014
3. Health statistics information, 2014.04
4. Health report, 2011