Six million children in poor countries who die from preventable illnesses each year could be saved but intervention and treatments are not reaching them, health experts have said.
Half of the deaths of children occur in six countries - India, Nigeria, China, Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia. The illnesses they die from range from diarrhoea, pneumonia and malnutrition to malaria and HIV/AIDS, all of which can be prevented or treated.
"We could save six million child lives every year just by doing what we already know how to do if people would put their heart and money into it. It is not a question of technical know-how," Dr Jennifer Bryce of the World Health Organisation (WHO) told a news conference yesterday.
But although doctors have the means to prevent the deaths, these are not being incorporated into public health policies.
In the latest issue of The Lancet medical journal, Dr Bryce and other child health experts urge the United Nations, governments, development agencies and scientists to focus on child health and survival.
"We see child survival as the most pressing moral and political issue of our time," Lancet editor Richard Horton said.
Nearly all of the deaths of young children occur in poor countries but interventions such as promoting breast-feeding, improving nutrition, introducing insecticides to prevent malaria, vaccinations against infections and improvements in water and sanitation could prevent these illnesses. Those that do occur can be treated with anti-malarial medicines, antibiotics and therapies for diarrhoea.
"Most of these interventions are not reaching half of the children who need them," said Dr Cesar Victora, an epidemiologist at Federal University of Pelotas, in Brazil.
The Commission on Macroeconomics and Health estimates that to increase interventions by 2007, $7.5 billion a year would be needed, less than the amount wealthy countries spend on pet food annually.
"The initial impetus on child survival that was present in the 1980s just discontinued in the 1990s," Dr Victora added.
The UN Children's Fund, UNICEF, said it agreed with the findings but said it was simplistic to suggest that an approach that worked in the 1980s would have a similar success.
"There are much more complex challenges we are facing now, including AIDS and conflict," Mr Alfred Ironside, a UNICEF spokesman, said.
Weak healthcare systems and disproportionate spending on the health needs of the rich were compounding the health problems of the world's poorest children.
"The key issue is we need political will. We need political will at international level," Dr Victora said. - (Reuters)