Children are our future !!!!

This project is for my math and science class called population. The purpose of this project was to write an argument to a topic that we were assigned. I was assigned child mortality and I wrote mine on what we could do to prevent it. I am proud of all the work I did especially in my writing. I learned a lot more about child mortality than I already knew.


                                            

Measles Campaign 17. N.P. 17 December 2008. Flickr.

Child mortality is a big problem for our population. For example, in 2007, the child population was 82,304,668 and the number of children that died were 53,287, putting the child mortality rate at 64.7 (“Child Mortality”). One way to address the issue of child mortality is providing health benefits for pregnant and nursing mothers, because the mother’s health affects the child’s health.

    Take Brazil for example. Last year, they reached the United Nation’s goal of reducing child mortality by ⅔, and they continue to provide new solutions for the problem of child mortality (Page). In Brazil especially, poverty affects access to health care and vaccinations in particular.  According to Page, one of the most important solutions they have found is visiting families and informing them about health issues, including why mothers should breastfeed and how to get vaccinated. “When I started,” says Graça, “the big killers of children here were pneumonia, diarrhea, measles and malnutrition. But we have made a lot of progress on all of these, including through vaccinations and helping everyone understand how important breastfeeding is.”  The programs in Brazil are doing just that.

    A similar solution is being implemented in Uruguay.  Zunin writes about a program in Uruguay that has decreased the rates of malnutrition in children.  The programme called “Uruguay Grows with You,” provides regular medical check-ups for children, which increased from 50 to 82 percent (Zunin).  Like Brazil’s program, the program in Uruguay reaches 1,447 children and 313 pregnant women (Zunin).  The program has been very effective in reducing child mortality.  For example, prematurity decreased among newborns from 9 to 7 percent (Zunin).  Both the program in Brazil and the program in Uruguay attempt to help mothers and children of low economic status.  In addition, they both provide medical attention and education on the important issue of child mortality.  

Have you ever heard someone say, “Children are the future”?  Well, it’s true.  Children have dreams, and they have the right to accomplish those dreams, and you never know what he/she might do to improve the state of our world.  If the child mortality rate does not decrease, take a moment to consider the effect on our population.

Indeed, the population is at an all-time high, and continues to grow daily, but I don’t think it’s fair for the government to decide who gets to live and who doesn’t.  Thus, I sincerely think that we need programs in place around the world to keep mothers and young children informed about the actions they can take to better their health.  As Patrick McDonald, Founder of Viva Network said, "Why is it that a child's death amounts to a tragedy, but the death of millions is merely a statistic?"  Saving one child may not change statistics much, but it may

change the outcome on our world.

Citations:

“Child Mortality 2007.” National MCH Center For Child Death Review. N.P. (2007)

Page, Kent. “A health worker on the front line of reducing child mortality in Brazil.” Unicef. (16 September 2013).

Zunin, Esteban. “In Uruguay, Programme Helps Parents Keep Children Healthy.” United Nations Development Programme. (2013). Web.15 Oct. 2013.