Every Child Deserves a 5th Birthday

It's funny, in the United States the death of a child is a tragedy. The death of a child from a treatable infectious disease makes headlines. As it should, since the leading causes of death for children 1-4 years of age in the Unites States are accidents, congenital malformations, deformations and chromosomal abnormalities.

Under-five mortality rate is the probability per 1,000 that a newborn baby will die before reaching age five, if subject to current age-specific mortality rates. In 2010, the under-five mortality rate in the United States was 8. This same year in Mozambique, the rate was 135. And the major cause, you guessed it, comes from a 100% preventable and treatable disease- malaria.

I am in no way justifying the deaths of children in the United States. In no way are they more or less important than the deaths of children in Moz. But here, this exorbitant number of deaths is not news. It is not a tragedy. It is just a way of life.

Many people are aware of World AIDS Day on December 1st, but less are informed of April 25th. Like World AIDS Day, World Malaria Day was created to raise awareness of the disease and its deadly effects around the world. In Mozambique, approximately 340 children die EVERY DAY from malaria. Roughly 85 children are infected every day with HIV (through mother-to-child transmission). It's time for malaria to get the recognition and notoriety it so truly deserves.

I'm not writing this to get people to donate money. I don't think foreign aid, specifically for fighting malaria, is the answer. In my opinion, the only solution is time and patience and well-informed Mozambican leaders who can generate behavior change in their own communities. Handing out mosquito nets is not an appropriate practice when the population is too poor and uneducated to pass up turning the supposed bed nets into fishing equipment or a food storage material.

Yes, unfortunately, there are no simple solutions. But that goes without saying here in Mozambique. Like so many other things, you must think "pouco a pouco" (little by little).


References:
The World Bank. http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.DYN.MORT
UNICEF. http://www.unicef.org/mozambique/child_survival.html