CNN To Highlight UNICEF and Child Survival Sunday

CNN will highlight the work of UNICEF in a special program to air this coming Sunday, July 6, 2008 at 8PM and repeated at 11PM EST. This is an excellent program and relates to the CNN Survival Project. You can learn more here.

If you are traveling this weekend, set your recorders to record the program. If we hear about a downloadable podcast, we will feature it in our next newsletter. Our colleagues at UNICEF deserve a lot of praise for their continued work around the globe helping children and their families.

Thank you.

-Andrew E. Barrier, Ph.D., Executive Director, US Coalition for Child Survival (USCCS)

A Gift for Children on Mother’s Day

From Liz Creel of the US Coalition for Child Survival

This Mother’s Day, along with the usual flowers and brunch in bed, think about how the recent rise in global food prices makes even the simple things in life luxuries for the world’s poor. This jump in prices threatens over 35 million of the world’s children - 10 percent under the age of 5 - putting them at even greater risk of malnutrition. According to the World Bank and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, prices have risen more than 80 percent over the last three years with the price tag for some staples like rice jumping a staggering 141 percent since January.

The present crisis brings me back to a visit that I took to Ethiopia nearly 5 years ago. I was working with a group of women’s health activists from various countries in East Africa and we visited a CARE project in the southern part of the Afar region. (more…)

Creating Safe Drinking Water is Not Rocket Science

Although many of us know that water is a scarce resource in our world, few people know that more than 5,000 children under the age of 5 die each day due to lack of access to clean and safe drinking water. That’s nearly 2 million children each year. On World Water Day, we need to remember these children and their families.

Although I have worked in healthcare for more than 30 years, I didn’t know the depth of the crisis of poor sanitation and dangerous water. I was shocked at these statistics when I came to the US Coalition for Child Survival in 2006.

In 2005, I paid a visit to the Children’s Hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan. Afghanistan has one of the worst infant, child and maternal mortality statistics in the developing world. Although improvements have been made in the last few years, there continues to be a crisis there. When I visited Children’s Hospital of Kabul, I found that each day nearly 1,000 children come to the clinic seeking help. The hospital, at that time, didn’t have clean water or working sanitation. Babies were sharing incubators and the food was horrible. Many children showed up due to malnutrition, dehydration and illnesses related to unsafe drinking water.

I saw so much pain in the faces of the children and families during my two weeks in Kabul.

Creating safe drinking water and making it accessible to children and families is not rocket science. We’re not waiting for any new inventions or technology. The cost is low and the results are truly life-saving. Access to clean water and sanitation can help prevent Diarrheal Disease, one of the leading causes of death among children under 5. Read our fact sheet and learn more about the causes, solutions and success stories. Download our fact sheet at here.

You can make a difference and the support of the ONE Campaign has already generated more than 200,000 letters to Congress to support the Global Child Survival Act. Our website has all the information and details on the causes and solutions to the global child survival crisis.

You can also learn more about safe drinking water here. Watch the flash program and get all the facts!

-Andrew Barrer, Executive Director, US Coalition for Child Survival