Preventable diseases claim 2.5 lakh under-5 children a year

4 June 2010, 18:00 PM

Staff Correspondent

Save the Children launches a campaign titled "Every One" in the city yesterday to create awareness about the issue of child survival.Photo: STAR

With the theme 'I care, I Walk', Save the Children yesterday launched a campaign titled “Every One” to create awareness on the issue of child survival among the people as well as to honour hundreds of health workers working to save the lives of children all over the world. In the one-kilometre walk in Dhanmondi area of the city, celebrities and volunteers expressed solidarity with the thousands of health workers around the world who walk from home to home to provide the critical life saving health services available to the mothers and children in need. Save the Children for the first time in the country launched the campaign Every One to create awareness about high rate of deaths of children under five at a press conference at the Russian Cultural Centre in the city. Some 250,000 children die each year in the country before reaching their fifth birthday from different preventable diseases like pneumonia and diarrhea. Globally the number is more bulky that is nine million every year. “In every three second a child dies in the world and in every four second one child is saved from dying with the help of the local healthcare workers, thus the healthcare workers do deserve the honour,” said Suman Sengupta, director of the Save the Children Country. A Save the Children study under the project named Projahnmo has found a 34 percent reduction in newborn mortality could be possible for the support given by local healthcare workers through home visit, he added. He also said, “The campaign is about actions; health workers walking miles daily to make healthcare available to people in remote regions which exemplifies how simple actions can contribute towards saving lives”. Musicians, actors, athletes, models, TV anchors and different media personalities became ambassadors of the campaign to aware people of taking action from respective fields in stopping child morality which can easily be brought into zero. Actor Bipasha Hayat, Natasha Hayat, Fazlul Haque Babu, cricketer Habibul Bashar Suman, TV anchor Sharmin Lucky and singer Topu took part in the walk followed by the press conference. Every One campaign will go to universities and colleges on June 13 to create a platform to involve youths through acts that interest them like photography, debate, music and drama based on the theme of child survival. A musical show was also organised at the Rabindra Sarobar in Dhanmondi as part of the campaign.