96,000 Malawi Children Die Annually of Preventable Diseases

Some 96,000 Malawian children who are under five years old are still dying annually, mostly from largely preventable diseases such as diarrhea and malaria, the UNICEF resident representative, Aida Girma, said on Tuesday.
She told journalists in Lilongwe on Tuesday during the opening of Child Health Sanitation Week that the main direct causes of the high infant and child deaths in the country included pneumonia, neonatal conditions, diarrhea, malaria, HIV/AIDS and malnutrition.

“These children have a compromised health status arising from poverty, food insecurity, and poor hygiene and sanitation,” she added.

She also said indirect causes of children’s and women’s poor health were due to inadequate knowledge, poor caring capacities of caregivers, inadequate access to and poor quality of health services.

Girma observed that there is evidence that implementation of high impact but affordable priority interventions at a high scale can prevent 63 percent of current mortality in young children, especially when the interventions are implemented at home as well as in the community.

She therefore urged government and its partners to redouble, improve and promote efforts that could see the reduction of under-five mortality.

Health Minister Khumbo Kachali said government has put in place ways of strengthening child survival and development to reduce child mortality.

“We have formulated a policy to accelerate child survival and development and a national strategic plan has been developed to translate the policy into action. Communities are being mobilized to support the accelerated provision of high impact interventions to mothers, newborns and young children,” he said.

Source African Press Agency

Net News Publisher