3 million children

Sep 25th, 2009 1:57 PM UTC
By Josh Lozman

Oh, these UN weeks. Every year when the UN General Assembly meets (and this year, the Clinton Global Initiative and the G20 are putting their heads together, too), advocates for the world’s poor try to build momentum towards the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), eight targets designed to reduce global poverty and disease by 2015. In years past, we’ve entered these discussions with hugely complicated problems to solve. But this year is a bit different. There is big progress to report on MDG 4 – reducing preventable childhood deaths.

Last Thursday, UNICEF released a report announcing that the number of children dying each year before their fifth birthday had dropped to 8.8 million—the lowest number on record (an achievement that flew under most of the major medias radar screens). And while this is still 8.8 million too many deaths, it’s down from 12.5 million deaths in 1990. That means that doctors, nurses, community health workers, educators—even politicians and donors—have helped prevent 10,000 children from dying each day. TEN THOUSAND! One of these saved sons or daughters could hit upon the next big life-saving idea.

But there’s a catch. Right now, we actually don’t need any new big idea to take a significant step forward. Three million of the 8.8 million children are dying from things that we know how to prevent and treat: pneumonia and diarrhea. In the next year, vaccines for pneumococcal disease and rotavirus—two of the main causes of the diseases—will be introduced at approximately $7 a piece, a price cheap enough to realistically be distributed in the developing world. So we have the life-saving vaccines, and we know what it takes to distribute. Now we just need the money to do it.

The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI)—an innovative financing organization that funds the purchasing and distribution of vaccines—will be largely responsible for purchasing the pneumonia and rotavirus vaccines. And while they’re running short on funds, exciting progress was made during the busy UN week.

At a UN event yesterday afternoon, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and World Bank President Robert Zoellick announced a landmark $5.3 billion international deal that would tackle women’s and children’s health in the developing world—and save an estimated 10 million lives. The $5.3 billion investment, which marks the culmination of a year’s work by the Taskforce on Innovative Financing for Health Systems, includes:

•New commitments by leaders of Nepal, Malawi, Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone to expand access to health services

•A $1 billion expansion of the International Finance Facility for Immunization (IFFIm)

•A new mechanism for making voluntary contributions when buying airline tickets, expected to raise up to $3.2 billion by 2015

•$515 million for results-based funding health programs

•$360 million worth of debt conversions

•Launch of a value-added (VAT) tax credit pilot, expected to raise up to $220 million a year

•The commitment to explore a second Advance Market Commitment for life-saving vaccines

While this exciting announcement is not going to fulfill all of GAVI’s financing needs, it hopefully sets an important precedent that other donors will soon follow. It would be quite an achievement if at next year’s meeting of the UN General Assembly, there is even more good news to report.

The lives of 3 million children depend on it.

-Josh Lozman

TAGS: Policy News, Spotlight, UNICEF, United Nations