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Helping the World's Children
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20060 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
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12 / 1992 |
4,243 Words |
| Author
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Merlinda Fournier
Merlinda Fournier is a free-lance author based in the
Washington, D.C., area. |
The wall--the Vietnam Veterans Memorial--with its simple list of names is our nation's most popular memorial. Yet, in a single day as many children die around the world as there were Americans killed during ten years in Vietnam. No one knows their names. Every three days, more children's lives are lost than the total lost at Hiroshima. Each year, more children die than the total number of soldiers killed in World War II. Thus the figures on annual child mortality compare disturbingly with death tolls from this century's worst catastrophes. The most troubling realization about the roughly fifteen million children who die each year is that the vast majority of these deaths could have been prevented.
The slayers are famine, diarrhea, and preventable diseases. Children are dying in droves largely because they cannot eat enough, or eat properly nourishing foods. Clean drinking water and medical care often are not available. Resources that are abundant in the world are not getting to areas that need them. The worst of these are Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, and Africa, though there are pockets of need even in the midst of the most developed regions on earth.
Resources do not reach needy children for a number of reasons ranging from political and military upheaval to inadequate reserves and distribution capabilities. But one important reason is lack of public awareness of the problem. Most people simply are not aware of the magnitude of the catastrophe or do not understand its long-term implications. Still others know the numbers but do not see the problem as one that impacts them.
Until recently this was often true of governments as well. While such agencies as the United Nation's Children's Fund (UNICEF) were aggressively working to build global consciousness of the situation, it was not until 1990 that much attention was focused on it. In September of that year, the World Summit for Children was held. It was attended by seventy-one presidents and prime ministers representing 159 nations, the largest single gathering of heads of state in history. Out of that event emerged a codified, well-defined goal: to end the deaths of children by hunger and preventable disease by the year 2000, and to ensure the rights of all children worldwide to fundamental physical and mental development. These goals were described as reachable, given the track record on earlier goals such as the immunization of children against certain diseases, a task largely accomplished.
Many in the field of child mortality suggest that the greatest
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