Address Child mortality to achieve MDGs - UNICEF Executive Director

Accra, July 28, GNA - The Executive Director of the UNICEF, Ms Ann M. Veneman on Friday said targets of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) could only be achieved if child mortality was addressed. She said children issues ran through all the eight targets and most vulnerable children were not being reached with life-saving health and nutrition interventions.

Ms Veneman said this at a press beefing in Accra prior to her departure after a three-day working visit to Ghana.

Her visit to Ghana was to observe at first hand the Accelerated Child Survival Development (ACSD) approach, designed to reduce the number of children, who died from preventable causes in their first years of life.

The approach, which began in the Upper East, has helped in the reduction of child mortality in the Upper East Region from 155 per 100,000 life births to 79 per 100,000 from 1999 to 2003. The approach she said had contributed to a projected 14 per cent reduction in children under five mortality and had raised the levels of other key interventions such as immunization, Vitamin A Supplementation, use of insecticide treated bed nets, exclusive breast feeding, treatment of malaria using anti malaria drugs and complementary feeding. Ms Veneman commended Ghana for the success story in reducing child mortality using the ACSD approach and said "scaling up this approach across the West and Central Africa would save millions of young lives, dramatically transforming the region's chances of reaching the critical development of reducing child and infant mortality". She identified guinea worm disease, HIV-AIDS and proper nutrition as areas where community-based integrated approach could be used to help to save lives.

Hajia Alima Mahama, Minister of Women and Children Affairs commended UNICEF for the continuous support in addressing children and women issues.

She said the success of the approach had led the Government to adopt it under the name High Impact Rapid Delivery (HIRD) as a nationwide strategy to reduce under-five mortality. She said the Ministry with support from UNICEF would launch a campaign in November 2006 on the use of insecticide treated bed nets by children to fight malaria in children under five. She said UNICEF had procured two million bed nets for the campaign, which would be part of the national immunization day activities.