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The poorest countries are not providing children adequate basic healthcare, says the latest report from Save the Children
More than 53% of children (67 million) in India under the age of 5 have no access to basic healthcare facilities, according to the latest status report brought out by Save the Children, ‘State of the World’s Mothers 2008: Closing the gender gap for children under 5’. This means that one-third of the 200 million children in the world who don’t receive adequate healthcare are Indian. Poor children in India, Egypt and Brazil are three times more likely to die before their fifth birthday than children in other parts of the world. Malnutrition among children continues to haunt India. Over 40% of children under the age of 5 suffer from moderate or severe malnutrition in India, Madagascar, Niger, Sudan, Timor-Leste and Yemen. The report highlights the poor health condition of girls in India. In most countries the survival rate for girls is higher than boys, but in India it is the reverse. India has the world’s largest gender survival gap. Indian girls are 61% more likely than boys to die between the ages of 1 and 5. So, for every five boys who die, eight girls die. The report attributes this widening gender gap to girls getting much less healthcare than boys. Girls are often brought to healthcare facilities when the illness is in an advanced stage. They are also taken to less qualified doctors than male children. Even where progress is being made in child survival, reductions in female mortality are counterbalanced by female infanticide and sex-selective abortions. Researchers estimate there are as many as 500,000 “missing girls” each year in India due to sex-selective abortion and infanticide. The report also indicts the growing economic disparities in relation to healthcare. Around 66% of poor Indian children don’t receive adequate healthcare, while the figure for well-off children is 31%. “Over 1 million deaths of children under 5 occur annually in the first month of life in India,” the report says. This is because healthcare facilities for the poor are meagre while “doctors for the wealthy are plentiful”. Many of the 200 million deaths of children under 5 that occur worldwide are easily preventable if basic services such as immunisation, antibiotics, skilled care at childbirth and timely treatment of diarrhoea and malaria are in place.
Key findings of the report: - An alarming number of countries are failing to provide the most basic healthcare that would save children’s lives. In each of 55 developing countries -- which together account for 83% of child deaths -- more than 30% of children do not get basic healthcare when they need it.
- The poorest children are least likely to get lifesaving healthcare. The report shows large inequities in healthcare provided to the poorest children compared to the best-off children in almost every country.
- Child death rates are highest in the poorest, most disadvantaged places. Nearly all under-5 deaths (99%) occur in the developing world. Within countries, death rates among the poorest children are higher.
- The funding for child survival does not match the need. Worldwide spending on healthcare disproportionately benefits people living in high-income countries with expensive problems to treat, while most of the diseases, and almost all of the preventable child deaths, occur in developing countries.
- Closing healthcare coverage gaps could save more than 6 million children each year. It is estimated that 3.9 million more children would survive to the age of 5 every year if the world were to close the existing child survival equity gaps.
Source: http://www.savethechildren.org/newsroom/
2008/best-worst-countries-mother.html
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