World can eliminate preventable child death with combination of new technologies, capabilities

"Every child should have the opportunity to celebrate his or her fifth birthday," but 7.6 million "kids die within the first five years of life," a VOA editorial writes. "That is why [USAID] recently launched 'Every Child Deserves A Fifth Birthday,' an awareness-raising campaign leading up to the mid-June 'Child Survival: Call to Action' two-day conference," the editorial states, adding, "This high-level forum, convened by the governments of the United States, India and Ethiopia, together with [UNICEF], will mobilize political, non-governmental and private actors to end preventable child deaths."

"The combination of [recent technological] advances and capabilities plus some new data and modeling indicate that if we think seriously about this and if we make some pretty significant changes in the way we work to eliminate preventable child death -- we can eliminate preventable child death and we can bring the rate of under-five mortality in developing countries down to something that approximates the current OECD ... country average and that would account for saving about six million kids a year," USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah wrote in a recent article, according to the editorial. It concludes, "Seeing a child die of a preventable disease is the greatest fear of parents the world over. No family should have to live this fear, and no child should have to suffer that fate" (4/29).