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A new report in the medical journal The Lancet shows a sharp decline in child mortality rates in 14 Africanvillages taking part in the U.N.-backed Millennium VillageProject. Project officials say the findings are evidence thattackling several development goals at the same time using simple,low-cost solutions is vital for successful development. In the Millennium Village of Sauri in western Kenya, about 80babies out of 1,000 die within the first month after they areborn. That number may seem high, but six years ago, up to 140babies out of 1,000 might not live past their first month. James Wariero is regional health systems advisor at MillenniumDevelopment Goals Center, East and Southern Africa. Hedescribes one of several initiatives that the Sauri community hastaken to cut down on the babies' deaths. "We use a mobile telephony for a public health program that westarted called 'Child Count Plus,' through which community healthworkers track mothers who are pregnant, and track the antenatalvisits that they take, and know the expected date of delivery. Thatway, you try to prevent this problem of delays by ensuring thatthese mothers are referred early enough for delivery, and that theyare accompanied sometimes by the community health workers," saidWariero. Sauri is one of 14 so-called "Millennium Villages" in 10 countriesacross Africa, a project that began in 2006 to show how communitiescould implement the United Nations' eight Millennium DevelopmentGoals. These goals include: cutting extreme poverty and hungerin half; ensuring that children everywhere get free primaryeducation; and reducing by two-thirds the under-five mortalityrate. Economist and professor Jeffrey Sachs is founder of the MillenniumVillages Project. Sachs says that each community works onimproving their agriculture, health care, education, infrastructureand business development, simultaneously. "In each of the Millennium Villages there is a small team that hassomebody responsible for each one of those sectors," saidSachs. "The team works together to bring improved technologiesand strategies to bear in these areas." His initiative is starting to show results. This week, themedical journal The Lancet published a study that found death rates for children under fivedeclined 22 percent on average across nine Millennium Villages inthe first three years of their operation. When compared withsimilar communities in the 10 countries, the decline was 32percent. "Malaria control surely has played an enormous role in thisreduction of child mortality. One of the first steps in theMillennium Villages is to ensure that every sleeping site in everyhousehold has an anti-malaria bed net, that is a bed net treatedwith insecticide to protect against bites from the malaria-carryingmosquitoes," added Sachs. Also contributing to the decline in child mortality were front-linemalaria medicines, improved nutrition, the delivery of oralrehydration solutions in diarrhea cases, and immunization againstpneumonia. Regional health systems advisor Wariero says members of the Saurivillage are continually looking at ways to improve their healthcare and other programs. He says one measure is the so-called"verbal autopsy," where a trained health-care worker armed with asmartphone visits the homes of children who died. "We are trying to see the clinical causes of death, but also try tosee the social causes of death: the delays, whether there was alack of money, a lack of transport, whether there was belief incultural things that may have prevented them from seeking careearlier," said Wariero. He says the information collected helps health care workers to spotany trends and modify or implement new programs to prevent childdeaths. Founder Sachs says that the Millennium Villages Project also showsthat not much money is needed to significantly lift up acommunity's living standards. He says that, in the first threeyears of the project, total spending for each villager in the 14Millennium Villages was $115 per person - not a lot, he says, todevelop health care, education, agriculture, business, andinfrastructure. "But small amounts of money can go a long way in very impoverishedsettings by helping people who have almost nothing to be able togain access to these critical technologies, life-saving medicinesor prevention techniques like the bed nets or to build newclassrooms for their children," noted Sachs. The Millennium Villages Project is led by the Earth Institute atColumbia University in New York, the United Nations DevelopmentProgram and the New York-based non-profit organization MillenniumPromise. The e-commerce company in China offers quality products such as PTFE Filter Bags Manufacturer , China Water Bag Filter, and more. For more , please visit Polyester Filter Bags today!
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