Millions of children die needlessly

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PaulKing - 10 Dec 2004 06:20 GMT

Millions of children die needlessly

Nearly 11 million under age 5 succumb each year, largely to easily
preventable illnesses, health experts say.

By EMMA ROSS
The Associated Press

LONDON – The lives of 6 million children under 5 could be saved every
year
if flu shots and other low-cost measures to prevent or treat disease were
more widely used, global health experts say.

Every year, nearly 11 million children worldwide die before their fifth
birthdays, most from preventable causes such as diarrhea, pneumonia,
neonatal problems and malaria. Malnutrition is a major factor in more
than
half those deaths, researchers estimate.

In a series of articles this week in The Lancet medical journal, experts
say inexpensive lifesaving measures - such as breast feeding,
insecticide-treated bed nets, flu shots, antibiotics, newborn
resuscitation and clean childbirth - are not reaching the mothers and
children who need them most.

Scaling up those interventions to a level that would save 6 million lives
a year would cost about $7.5 billion annually, the experts say.
In the 1980s, the world made great progress in reducing unnecessary child
deaths through a UNICEF campaign called the child-survival revolution.
But
the momentum was lost in the 1990s.
"We have dropped the ball," said one of the experts, Cesar Victora,
professor of epidemiology at the Federal University of Pelotas in Brazil.
"Child survival has fallen off the international agenda. We need now a
second revolution to finish this job."
The number of deaths among children under 5 fell from 117 per 1,000 live
births in 1980 to 93 per 1,000 in 1990. Today, the death rate is still
declining but not as quickly - in 2000, it was 83 per 1,000.
Experts stressed two main reasons why progress appears to have stalled.
In the 1990s that HIV/AIDS shifted the world's attention and resources
toward fighting that specific diseases.
"I'm not saying that it was wrong, but child health lost out in that,"
said Hans Troedsson, director of child and adolescent health and
development at the World Health Organization.
The experts noted that the total number of child deaths each year is
greater than deaths due to HIV, malaria and tuberculosis combined.
The other major factor was complacency, experts say.
"We were doing really well," Troedsson said. "There was a kind of
attitude
that the job was more or less finished. That kind of perception meant
that
a lot of investments and commitments to keep the steam in child survival
was actually lost."
Other experts said the death of former UNICEF leader Jim Grant, who
spearheaded the child-survival revolution of the 1980s, left a void in
global leadership as UNICEF's focus shifted toward children's rights and
education.
The U.N. children's agency said it still spends most of its money on
child-survival programs and that many of its newer strategies addressing
children's rights and education translate in the long term to better
child
survival.
"The easy gains have been made," said UNICEF spokeswoman Marjorie
Newman-Williams. "We have now plateaued because the strategies we have to
put in place are more difficult."
Whereas earlier strategies were focused on delivering vaccines and
medicines to clinics, future progress does not necessarily depend on
that,
she said. The benefits of that approach have been mostly mined, she said.
Many of the actions that will reduce the deaths now are those that have
to
be taken into the home, such as breast-feeding, bed nets and proper
infant
nutrition after weaning.

"Those three heavily depend on women's time, women's knowledge and
availability," Newman-Williams said. "And to reduce neonatal mortality,
you have to focus on women's health. This is not a child health
intervention."

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Death - 10 Dec 2004 12:27 GMT

"PaulKing" <aimulti@aimultimedia.com> wrote in message

> Millions of children die needlessly
>
> Nearly 11 million under age 5 succumb each year, largely to easily
> preventable illnesses, health experts say.

By Cliff Kincaid
December 1, 2004
NewsWithViews.com

Dan Rather apologized for using bogus documents against President Bush and
it became a scandal that haunts CBS. But there have been no apologies or
even investigations concerning the media's use of bogus statistics about
AIDS and whether the U.S. Government's spending of approximately $150
billion for domestic and international HIV/AIDS programs has been justified.
President Bush has pledged an additional $15 billion to fight AIDS.

As "World AIDS Day" on December 1 comes and goes, the public should realize
that there is very little testing of people around the world to see if they
actually have the HIV virus.

In a story about journalist Jim Wooten's new book about AIDS in Africa,
Linton Weeks of the Washington Post said that, "Statistics for AIDS in
Africa are so overwhelmingly depressing they make your eye sockets throb."
He went on to cite AIDS figures from the U.N. that, by the world body's own
admission, are "estimates" based on assumptions that have been revised
downward because of "improved methodologies."

A U.N. website admits that there have been "steady improvements in the
modeling methodology," along with "better data" from individual countries,
which have led to "lower global HIV/AIDS estimates, not just for the current
year but also for past years."

In Kenya in Africa, the U.N. had once estimated the number of HIV/AIDS cases
at 15 percent of the population. But a subsequent study put the number much
lower, at 6.7 percent. Even this figure may be suspect, however. It was
based on a survey of only about 8,500 households. A smaller number of those
were actually tested.

In Africa, described by the Post as "a mass-grave in the making," you don't
even have to have HIV to be diagnosed with AIDS. If you're sick and have a
certain number of symptoms or health problems, you can be counted as an AIDS
statistic.

John Donnelly of the Boston Globe came forward last June to cast doubt on
the numbers, noting that "Estimates of the number of people with the AIDS
virus have been dramatically overstated in many countries because of errors
in statistical models and a possible undetected decline in the pandemic."

In a more recent story he noted that the U.N. now estimates that 37.2
million adults ages 15 to 49 and 2.2 million children around the world were
infected with HIV, "which it called the highest number ever." In fact, he
noted, the U.N. had put out estimates in previous years that were higher by
several million.

To understand how wild and misleading the figures can be, consider that
Donnelly also wrote a June 16, 2002, story about how the National
Intelligence Council, an arm of the CIA, had warned that the AIDS crisis
"will rapidly worsen, with the number of cases doubling in sub-Saharan
Africa in five years." The number of cases was actually estimated downward.

If this wasn't enough of a problem, some of the drugs being rushed to those
who are said to have AIDS don't work.

Abner Mason, Executive Director of the AIDS Responsibility Project, notes
that some anti-AIDS generic drugs distributed to Africa and endorsed by such
entities as the U.N. and the Clinton Foundation have been taken off the
market because they weren't properly tested and shown to be effective.

What's more, in Africa and other areas of the world, U.N. "peacekeepers"
have been caught raping the people, including children, they are supposed to
protect. What's not reported is that the U.N. doesn't test its own troops
for HIV before deploying them. So the U.N. is not only contributing to the
hideous crime of pedophilia, but is undoubtedly contributing to the spread
of AIDS.

The good news, at least for the U.N., is that the bureaucrats have
successfully managed one program. The U.N. Pension Fund is now worth over
$25 billion.

When I asked the U.S. Mission to the U.N. whether those pension-fund monies
should help pay for the proposed "modernization" of U.N. headquarters in New
York, I was told "this fund was created to provide benefits for retiring UN
staff" and any other purpose would not be justified. John Kerry's sister is
among the employees at the U.S. Mission to the U.N. The Bush administration
has offered the U.N. a 30-year loan to pay for the $1 billion project.

As a three-day AIDS Conference unfolded at U.N. headquarters back in 2001,
the world body spent $67,650 for red window film used to create the
impression of a giant AIDS red ribbon on the side of the headquarters
building at night.

This appearance of caring is also what drives the media coverage of AIDS.
The facts have been shunted aside.

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