Across the world, a child's survival is a lot like drawing a lottery ticket. Factors based purely on chance ā where a child is born, how much money his or her family has and what their ethnic background is ā can determine if a child lives past age 5.
That's the conclusion from a report published last week by Save the Children, which looked at survival rates in 87 low- and middle-income countries. In 78 percent of the countries, efforts to reduce mortality have left out at least one ethnic group or economic class. At the same time, simple interventions are preventing deaths in countries like Malawi and Bangladesh.
MaMoni is one of the success stories. The program's name means "mother-child" in Bengali. The director, Dr. Ishtiaq Mannan, works with the government to train health care workers to help mothers in underserved districts safely deliver their babies, to educate families about how to care for a newborn and to get mothers the support they need as quickly as possible. Funding comes from the U.S. Agency for International Development.
[For more of this story, written by Linda Poon, go to http://www.npr.org/blogs/goats...-saving-its-newborns]
Comments (0)