African health officials, child health experts gather for child survival summit in Ethiopia

"Representatives from African health ministries, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and child health experts [gathered] in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, January 16-18 to share strategies to increase child survival rates," IIP Digital reports. "The African Leadership for Child Survival -- A Promise Renewed conference follows last year's Child Survival Call to Action, which was co-convened by the governments of Ethiopia, India and the United States with UNICEF and launched a global road map to end preventable deaths of children under the age of five," the news service notes (1/17).

"African states are now renewing their promise they made to African children and mothers," Press TV writes (1/20). "African governments will implement a health scorecard to reduce child deaths on the continent," according to VOA News. "Delegates attending the African child survival conference also set higher targets to bring down the child mortality rate," the news service writes, noting, "The health scorecard is a monitoring system that publicly collects and reports health data and it has produced good results in several African countries such as Ethiopia" (Van Der Wolf, 1/18). USAID provides a video of USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah addressing the summit (1/16).