Investing in most disadvantaged children can save millions
Says new Unicef study
The global community can save millions of lives by investing first in the most disadvantaged children and communities, says a new Unicef study released yesterday.
The study was presented in two publications titled "Narrowing the gaps to meet the goals" and "Progress for children: Achieving the millennium development goals (MDGs) with equity".
They suggest that such an approach would also address the widening disparities that are accompanying progress toward the MDGs.
“Our findings challenge the traditional thinking that focusing on the poorest and most disadvantaged children is not cost-effective,” said Anthony Lake, Unicef's executive director.
By comparing the effectiveness of different strategies for delivering critical health interventions to those in greatest need, the study states that targeting the poorest and most disadvantaged children could save more lives per $1 million spent.
“An equity-focused strategy will yield not only a moral victory, right in principle, but an even more exciting one, right in practice,” he added.
Key findings of the Unicef study states that equity focused approach improves returns on investment and averts many more child and maternal deaths, a US $1 million investment in reducing under five deaths in a low-income and high mortality country could avert an estimated 60 percent more deaths than the current approach and ill health and illiteracy are concentrated in the most impoverished child populations.
Providing these children with essential services can greatly accelerate progress towards the MDGs and reduce disparities within nations, says a Unicef press release.
“The results of the Unicef study made me think that the equity focus can be persuasive on an instrumental as well as a values basis,” said Lawrence Haddad, director of the Institute of Development Studies.
"Progress for children: Meeting the MDGs with equity" presents evidence of disparities across a range of key indicators, including between developing and industrial nations, richest and poorest quintiles within nations, between rural and urban populations and between boys and girls.
The study states that children from the poorest 20 percent of households in the developing world are more than twice as likely to die before reaching their fifth birthdays as children from the richest 20 percent of households.
The study also focuses on other factors that may affect the progress toward the MDGs, such as children in the poorest quintiles of their societies are more than twice as likely to be underweight. They face a much greater risk of stunting compared to children from the richest quintiles.
Despite strides towards achieving gender parity in primary education over the past decade, girls and young women in developing regions remain at a considerable disadvantage in access to education, particularly at the secondary level.
Out of 884 million people who lack access to improved drinking water sources, 84 per cent of them live in rural areas.
The Unicef reports are being released in conjunction with a report by Save the Children, "A fair chance at life: Why equity matters for children," which focuses on MDG 4, reducing under five mortality by two thirds between 1990 and 2015.
The Save the Children report examines the disparities in progress on child survival between the wealthy and less well off in countries around the world.
It asserts that reaching marginalised communities is the key to reducing inequities and achieving MDG 4.
“The millennium declaration was designed to improve the lives of the world's most disadvantaged people,” said Lake.
“We believe this study's findings can have a real effect on global thinking about how we are pursuing the MDGs and about human development generally, helping us to improve the lives of millions of vulnerable children,” he added.
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