Health
Providing Health Care
Nearly 11 million children under five die each year, most from preventable diseases. One of the Millennium Development Goals is to reduce by two thirds the mortality rate among children under five by 2015. Sadly, the majority of developing countries are not on track to meet this target..
"Providing universal access to broad-based health services could save several million children’s lives each year…We have the treatments, the technology is known and affordable. The problem in many countries is getting the staff, medicines, vaccines and information to those who need them on time and in sufficient quantities. In too many countries, the health systems to do that either do not exist or are on the point of collapse."
- WHO Director-General Dr Lee Jong-wook
Health interventions are an integral part of every ChildFund project. ChildFund works alongside families and caregivers to help them to recognize the critical health needs of children and their families and offer appropriate responses. Health programs also support local health care systems by helping supply appropriate medicines, equipment and trained personnel at health centres and by working with local Ministry of Health officials to train staff members.
All ChildFund programs cover five main health care principles: Child Survival, Prevention of Infectious Diseases, Maternal Health, Water and Sanitation and Food Security.
Child Survival
ChildFund employs recognized best practices to ensure children’s survival beyond the critical first five years of life. The principles of child survival include ensuring children have proper nutritional intake and the promotion of breastfeeding; helping families and caregivers to recognise and treat acute respiratory infections; controlling diarrhoeal disease through hygiene promotion, water supply interventions and proper management of the diseases; and assuring adequate immunization coverage.
Prevention of Infectious Diseases
Preventable infectious diseases such as malaria, TB, diarrhoea and HIV are responsible for over 70% of child deaths. ChildFund focuses on strengthening the overall health system, encouraging improved family and community health care practices, and improving the case management skills of health care staff to ensure that children with severe illness are referred to hospital for treatment.
Maternal Health
In collaboration with community organizations, ChildFund promotes increased access to family planning services, and trains traditional birth attendants to ensure safe delivery at the community level.
Water and Sanitation
ChildFund incorporates safe water and sanitation activities into all of its programs to ensure adequate quantities of safe water is available in order to prevent deaths from water-born diseases. This includes the building of wells for clean water and safe toilet facilities.
"Water and sanitation is one of the primary drivers of public health…once we can secure access to clean water and to adequate sanitation facilities for all people, irrespective of the difference in their living conditions, a huge battle against all kinds of diseases will be won."
-Dr Lee Jong-wook, Director General, World Health Organization (WHO)
Access to safe water and sanitation is the foundation of good health. Poor water supplies and poor sanitation practices pose a major threat to the health of children under five years, who are particularly vulnerable to water-borne and diarrhoeal disease. Each year over two million children die from diarrhoeal disease and 80% of these deaths occur in the first two years of life. Young children are also more vulnerable to skin diseases and eye infections which are prevented by adequate washing with clean water. One of the first priorities in all ChildFund programmes is to ensure that children and their families have access to safe water.
Yet safe water supplies can only be guaranteed when combined with safe sanitation practices. This is why initiatives to build access to safe water in ChildFund programmes are coupled with improved access to sanitation. In addition to community based education and promotion of safe hygiene practices, ChildFund programmes build safe toilet facilities to ensure that water supplies are not contaminated.
Making water accessible
Unsafe water and inadequate sanitation can pose a direct threat to people’s health, however even when people do have access to safe water, they may have to carry it over large distances, or pay for it. Millions of people, primarily women and children, spend hours each day hauling water to their homes and land. Many families are forced to spend up to 50% of their income paying for access to safe water supplies closer to their homes. With access to safe water close to 
home, women are able to spend more time caring for their children, enhancing their children’s health. When they are no longer required to haul water for hours each day, their children are able to attend school. This is why ChildFund communities aim to make safe water more readily available to children and their families, so children are able to take time to focus on their education.
Food Security
Food security is a key factor in ensuring a child’s proper nutrition and health. Food security programs address issues of food access, availability and utilization by encouraging variety in crops grown and supplementary feeding for young children.
HIV/AIDS epidemic
HIV and AIDS remains the biggest health crisis of our time, especially for our most vulnerable generation: our children.
Over the last 25 years HIV/AIDS has spread relentlessly infecting 65 million people and killing 25 million people. The disease supposedly in its mature epidemic stages continues to expand beyond limits that many experts believed impossible.
People living with AIDS in the developing world typically suffer the final stages of the disease in their own homes, with little or no medical support. Many children are forced to drop out of school to care for their dying parents, leaving them uneducated and unable to earn a living. HIV/AIDS is robbing these children of their childhood and leaving them vulnerable to exploitation. The love and security of parents and the very family structure children so desperately need is taken from them.
Globally it is estimated that 15 million children are AIDS orphans, with 12 million of them living in sub-Saharan Africa, the epicenter of HIV/AIDS. In Ethiopia alone today the estimate of AIDS orphans stands at 1.2 million. Dr Meherete Menebere, ChildFund HIV/AIDS specialist based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia says that orphaned children are extremely vulnerable from an early age, with no family bread winner there is no guarantee of shelter, food, schooling or clothing.
She says the hardest thing to witness is that most of these children don’t have a future. They are human beings but she asks "What does it mean to be a human being without a future?"
“These children, particularly the girls, are often exploited and are forced to go into commercial sex work. Others will go into child labour working for very little pay. We cannot say these children are existing, they are barely surviving.”
“When children lose parents due to AIDS, they are heading families and it kills their childhoods as they are forced to think and act like adults all the time. Mentally they are stressed and depressed.”
Dr Menebere says that without grants or child sponsorship programmes, HIV affected children and AIDS orphan’s basic needs would not be met and these children would be abused and exploited.
What ChildFund is doing to Combat HIV/AIDS in our programs around the world
ChildFund supports children and affected familues through the following HIV/AIDS interventions:
- Helping secure housing and shelter
- Food and nutritional aid
- Psychological and social support for HIV/AIDS affected children and families
- Training for home-based care
- Provide programs to ensure HIV affected people receive the right medication and administer it in the right way
- Micro-finance services, vocational training and income generation activities
- Providing access to education
- Creation of child centered spaces to mobilize families and rally support from the community to care for orphans and other vulnerable children affected by HIV/AIDS.
Program Profile 1: Meet Saniya: One of Uganda’s youngest caregivers
By Paul Mayende, ChildFund Uganda
Saniya is 8 years old; she is also in charge of the household and playing the role of care giver to her grandmother, Jajja, whom she often refers to as ‘mummy’. Jajja has HIV/AIDS. Saniya is among the many young HIV/AIDS caregivers in Uganda.
“Saniya did all the housework, cleaning, cooking, fetching water and taking care of me,” said Jajja
Saniya was forced to leave school for 3 months to care for her grandmother. One night Jajja started vomiting blood. With help from neighbours Saniya took Jajja to the national hospital HIV/AIDS unit. There, Saniya sent doctors out of the room crying when they realized she was the only person available to sign forms so that her grandmother could start using anti-retroviral treatment for AIDS.
Saniya was enrolled in ChildFund Uganda Wakiso program, where community volunteers offer motherly care to HIV/AIDS clients. Volunteers took on Saniya’s roles at home so she could attend school. They visited daily until Saniya’s grandmother was strong again and now only visit when the need arises
“I am relieved that now I am able to go to school. Now my major task is watching the clock and reminding Jajja to take her medicine before I go to school at 8 am and before I go to bed at 8 pm,” said Saniya.
Saniya and other children like her are getting a second chance at education and a better life because of programs like Mother Care and ChildFund Uganda.
Program Profile 2: ‘Grannies’ as Health Resources
At current rates, the world is not on track to reach the 2015 Millenium Development Goal to reduce maternal mortality. Each year, more than half a million women die in pregnancy and childbirth, with the vast majority living in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia.
If the world is to meet the goals of reducing maternal and under-five mortality by 2015, only a focused, coordinated effort can bring women, newborns and children the healthcare they need.
- WHO Director-General Dr Lee Jong-wook
In Senegal, older women, known as ‘grannies’, are influential sources of information for younger women. ChildFund realized that in order to improve child and maternal health, health information needed to be targeted to the grannies who were actually making decisions about diet, work and rest for expecting mothers, and breastfeeding practices for new mothers.
ChildFund incorporated the grannies into the health program by organising informative sessions for older women covering the basics of pregnancy, breastfeeding and childcare. Sessions involved the use of songs, stories and group discussions. The songs praised the grandmothers for the important role they play in the family and community and encouraged them to participate and learn.
The grannies responded enthusiastically. Before the program, grannies advised expectant mothers to eat little to ensure a low birth weight for an easy delivery. Now they encourage mothers to eat more and better quality food when pregnant and breastfeeding. As a result the average birth weight has risen and newborns and mothers are stronger and healthier. Also, grannies refused to let pregnant women rest during the day, believing it was detrimental to their health, but now they encourage pregnant women to decrease their workloads. In the past, breastfeeding immediately after birth was once discouraged, but now grannies encourage mothers to breastfeed immediately and exclusively to provide infants with important antibodies and complete nutrition.
ChildFund designs and implements all of its programs with consideration for the context and culture of the local community and area. Encouraging participation in and ownership of programs ensures their continuation and sustainability for future generations.
