The health pillar focuses on health education and preventive care, to try and keep children as healthy as possible so that they can attend school, and parents can be around longer The pillar was created because they wanted to see a change in the amount of child death every year that can be decreased by adequate medical treatment. As a goal free the children wants to see changed behaviours in the communities of the developing countries. They want to see long-term improvement and development in the countries, as they don’t just want a temporary fix. Barriers exist in specific communities like sub-Saharan Africa, where 14.8 million children have lost one or both parents to AIDS, which is often passed down to their children. In India the average life expectancy is only until you’re about 65 years old due to lack of health care. Overall children living in developing countries are more likely to die before the age of 5 then any child living in an industrialized country.
Our Goal
The Millennium Development Goals that our pillar is specifically related to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, reduce child mortality, improving maternal health, and combat AIDS/HIV, malaria and other diseases. From 1990 - 2012, the proportion of underweight children in developing countries such as Northern Africa and Eastern Asia have declined from 25% to 14% over the years. The most common cause of death is malnutrition, where 45% of deaths for children under the age of 5 can be linked to this issue. Significant progress has been made around the world in reducing child mortality under the age of five years old. There is a wider spread of immunization coverage being dispersed to countries resulting in high levels of immunization.Between 2000-2012, estimated measles deaths decreased by 78% to 122000 globally. Between 1990 and 2012, under-5 mortality declined by 47% , from an estimated rate of 90 deaths per 1000 live births down to 48. Between 2000-2012, estimated measles deaths decreased by 78% to 122000 globally. Despite the vast improvement seen, globally we are unlikely able to reach the millennium development target of a two-third reduction in 1990 mortality levels by 2012. In order to reduce the number of maternal deaths, women need the ability to access good-quality reproductive health care and effective interventions. About 81% of women received antenatal care at least once during pregnancy, but women who reached the recommended minimum of 4 visits drops to 56%. Although reduction in the amount of maternal deaths is seen between 1990 and 2013 from 52300-28900, the declining rate is under 50% of required amount to achieve the millennium development goal target of a ¾ reduction in the mortality ratio. 3.4 million people were newly infected with HIV in 2001, leading to a 33% decrease in new infections by 2012 dropping to 2.3 million infected with HIV. Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for 70% of people who have acquired the HIV infection worldwide. The amount of people living with aids was estimated to be around 35 million in 2012. While access to antiviral therapy in low/middle income countries improves, the population living with HIV will continue to grow since fewer people are dying from AIDS related causes. Half the worlds population is at risk of getting malaria, in 2012 207 million people were infected, and 627000 died. During 2000-2012, malaria infection deaths have decreased globally by 29%. The distribution of insecticide-treated nets and indoor residual spraying has increased drastically, and will have to be sustained in order to prevent the rise of disease and deaths caused by malaria. Neglected tropical diseases are a diverse group of infections caused by pathogens, viruses, bacteria etc. These diseases affect more than one billion, despite new momentum characterized by unmeasured progress, some diseases remain a significant obstacle to health, making it harder to achieve the millennium development goals and pose an impediment to poverty reduction and economic development.
How Can We Help?
People can help with this issue by a variety of things. Not necessarily should there be more medicine and more doctors but we should improve the access so that community members have more access to health care and know more about healthy behaviours, for example, eating healthy. Secondly, we should change our behaviour so that everyone in the community is practicing a healthy lifestyle. Also, changing out status so that health diseases are lowered significantly. By improving all of these things we are able to create mobile health units, training for health care workers and provision of basic medical supplies.
Others Helping
Some other amazing organizations that are helping are The World Health Organization, AmeriCares, and Amref Health Africa Inc.
The World Health Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations that is concerned with international public health. The World Health Organization states that its objective "is the attainment by all people of the highest possible level of health". World Health Organization addresses government health policy with two aims: firstly, "to address the underlying social and economic determinants of health through policies and programmes that enhance health equity and integrate pro-poor, gender-responsive, and human rights-based approaches" and secondly "to promote a healthier environment, intensify primary prevention and influence public policies in all sectors so as to address the root causes of environmental threats to health".
AmeriCares Global Medical Assistance program delivers essential medicines and supplies to over 3,500 hospitals and health clinics in the developing world. Their medical and humanitarian aid includes prescription and over-the-counter medicines, nutritional supplements and surgical supplies along with personal hygiene products, safety supplies and household cleaning items. Donations to this cause are used to help fund the supplies needed to be brought to developing countries.
Amref Health Africa Inc is a organization with a mission that is to improve the health of people in Africa by partnering with and empowering communities, and strengthening health systems. Amref Health Africa Inc is yet another organization that strives to help improve Health Care forplaces that can't afford it.
Free the children's strategies to support health include setting up mobile health clinics
Providing basic medical supplies
Training for health care workers
Creating an epilepsy management program
Health education and outreach
Baraka Health Clinic. They also use this as their base so they can reach out to other communities with their medical needs. An example of how they approach communities to offer help is when they opened the Baraka Health Clinic in Narok South District of Kenya, where a mother of 6, Alice Cheborgei, talks about how the healthcare in her community has greatly improved. There is now access to inexpensive, close by medical services open to everyone. Before the clinic opened, Alice expressed that many of the sick would simply just stay home because the distance to the closest medical building was too far. This includes when she suffered from malaria, as well as when her son got it. This clinic was important to her and her community, because if someone is too sick to farm and do their job, it effects the entire community.
What is Canada Doing to Help?
The Canadian government, Sick Kids Foundation and Ghana government are working together to train pediatric nurses and midwives to reduce child mortality and improve maternal health in 6.7 million newborns. The overall goal is to end preventable deaths in mothers and newborn children within one generation.The project is set to run 5 years and train 1,500 pediatric nurses who can not only help with the health of children, but also advocate for them. The Harper government announced 3.5 billion dollars towards this project along with strengthening healthcare systems and improving nutrition. In addition, a new program is being set up at the University of Ghana to train paediatric nurses, the first of it’s kind in Ghana.
We feel that this a strong step in the right direction towards improving health care in developing countries such as Ghana. Reducing child mortality and improving the health of new mothers will increase the strength of the new generation and create real change where it is needed.