Westport, CT ( April 7, 2005 )

Save the Children CEO and President Charles MacCormack

In the next 24 hours, almost 30,000 children under age 5 will die, most from preventable and treatable causes. Almost all of these children live in the developing world. Forty percent of these children will not have even reached their first month of life. The solutions to save the majority of these young lives are known and within our reach. Yet, many in the developing world, and especially the poor, still lack access to these basic services such as immunizations, Vitamin A supplements and breastfeeding information, resulting in this tragic and needless loss of life. Ensuring the survival and well-being of children is a main theme of this year's World Health Day.

In a world of plenty, all children should be given a fighting chance to live to see their fifth birthday. It will take the commitment of the United States and the global community at all levels to help these children survive and thrive. The good news is that many stakeholders are already uniting together under the common goal of saving these young lives.

Global Partnerships: Promoting Attention and Action

In 2000, the United States joined 188 other member nations of the United Nations pledging to reduce child deaths worldwide by two-thirds before 2015. This pledge was part of the Millennium Development Goals. World leaders will hold a summit this September to review progress since these goals were adopted. Regrettably, the world is not on track to meet the child survival goal. Action is needed now if we hope to get on track.

Steps are being taken this week in New Delhi , India to help countries meet their goal. The Government of India, the Partnership for Safe Motherhood and Newborn Health, the Healthy Newborn Partnership – led by Save the Children - and the Child Survival Partnership are convening a meeting to bring together ministers of health from Bangladesh, Bolivia, Cambodia, Ethiopia, India, Mali, Mozambique, Nepal, Pakistan, Tanzania and Uganda and representatives of international agencies, development partners, civil society and other stakeholders in a shared effort to mobilize new commitments and action for improving maternal, newborn and child health. The gathering is expected to spur greater national and international investment in maternal, newborn and child health and lead to the development and implementation of regional and country specific action plans in the coming months. These plans will build on progress already made by many countries that are working to reduce maternal and child deaths.

U.S. Partnerships: Gaining Grassroots Support

Americans consistently rank child survival in poor countries as a top priority of U.S. foreign policy. Yet U.S. foreign assistance for child survival and maternal health remained stagnant between 1997 and 2003, while the numbers of children under 5 and the numbers of young women in their reproductive years increased.

The unprecedented U.S. response to the December 26 tsunami in South Asia illustrates the power of what individuals, groups and communities can do to change the lives of children and their families. Several efforts are underway to make use of this power to prevent millions of needless child deaths worldwide.

• The multimedia project on global health Rx for Survival - A Global Health Challenge announced today by WGBH Boston and Vulcan Productions, in partnership with PBS, TIME magazine, and The Penguin Press, will bring pressing global health issues into the homes of millions of Americans. But even these media partners realize that increasing U.S. public awareness on global health issues alone won’t save young lives unless you marry awareness with action. In an effort to mobilize a potential audience of 100 million Americans through the combined media partnership and offer viewers and readers actions they can take in their own homes and communities, an outreach campaign on child survival – Rx for Child Survival - will be launched in June. Save the Children is a key partner in this outreach campaign.
  
  
• The U.S. Coalition for Child Survival www.child-survival.org is a collaboration of 180 organizations and individuals united to strengthen U.S. and global commitment to improve the health and survival of children in developing countries. David Oot, Save the Children’s Director of Health, chairs the coalition, which advocates for increased U.S. government, private and multi-lateral funding for child and maternal health and survival.

• Save the Children has joined with other humanitarian organizations in the ONE campaign www.onecampaign.org to mobilize Americans to call on their leaders to make the changes necessary to provide hope and opportunity for the world's poorest children and guarantee their very survival. Americans are asked to show their support by signing the ONE Declaration.

This World Health Day, we are reminded that the solutions to saving children’s lives exist and are within reach, and we have the power – globally, nationally, locally – to help these children survive. So, what are we waiting for?