Zinc Saves Kids Newsletter July 2012

2.08.2012 г.

At the ‘Child Survival Call for Action’ Conference held in Washington in mid-June a new public-private partnership was launched with a goal to save millions of children’s lives by accelerating progress toward ending preventable childhood deaths from diarrhea and pneumonia in high burden countries. The declaration was supported by a US$ 20 million pledge for treatment scale up involving zinc. Signatories to the Declaration included the U.S. and Canadian governments, the Clinton Health Access Initiative, the UN MDG Health Alliance, the Zinc Alliance of Child Health (ZACH), McCann Health, the International Zinc Association and a number of other public, private and civil society partners.
The ‘Child Survival Call for Action’ conference was convened by the governments of the USA, India and Ethiopia in close cooperation with UNICEF and called upon the 700 participants to establish specific plans to drastically reduce child mortality. In the past two decades, child mortality has fallen from 12 million in 1990 to 7.6 million in 2010. While impressive, progress is not fast enough to achieve Millennium Development Goal #4 which aims at reducing the under-five mortality rate by two thirds, between 1990 and 2015.
Diarrhea and pneumonia are among the leading causes of child mortality in low-income countries claiming the lives of two million children every year. Most of these deaths occur in a handful of countries including India, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Pakistan and Ethiopia. 90% of diarrheal deaths can be averted with a treatment of low-osmolar oral rehydration salts (ORS) and zinc. A life-saving 10-day course of ORS and zinc costs about US$ 0.50. However, less than 5% of children under five in high burden countries receive the full recommended treatment and just 23% of children receive antibiotics to treat pneumonia.
Experiences from the Zinc Saves Kids and other programs show that tremendous impact can be achieved by scaling up existing interventions with ORS and zinc.

ZACH runs for ‘Zinc Saves Kids’

The Zinc