Today, it’s not an issue of awareness anymore; it is about seeking practical solutions. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2000–2015 and the subsequent period of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) show the raging mortality rate under the age of five in both individual and global countries.
United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported in 2019 that infectious diseases such as pneumonia, diarrhea, and malaria caused the death of over 14,000 children under the age of 5 every single day. That brings about a record of 5.2 million deaths in 2019.
The alarming record is a warning sign of the neglect among equal rights and privileges of children.
Factors Affecting Child Health and Mortality Rate
These leading illnesses include preterm birth (babies born alive before 37 weeks of pregnancy) and intrapartum-related (during birth) complications. These conditions ceased to exist until now, causing continuous records of deaths.
The causes of this raging mortality rate reveal the failing function of vital registration systems. Paying much attention to this conflict would have reflected on the direct report of underlying causes of death. Still, the results seem to convict inadequate response.
Findings show the other causes of death are lower respiratory infections and measles. While a vaccine might have prevented these diseases, these illnesses are untended for long because of the unavailability of existing facilities specific to child healthcare demand in challenged countries.
Deaths at an early age and in newborns disclose many possible reasons. For one, unpreparedness for the pregnancy of young parents can be a factor. Another is that some countries’ reproductive health management programs and projects, especially youth, are falling short. Another angle is the insufficient knowledge of family planning visible in countries challenged by declining literacy rates. Progress of orientation is incompetently not enough to guide adults in communities enduring poverty and lack of education.
Long before the COVID-19 pandemic, a wide span of the ebola and SARS4 outbreak in 2014 showed an increased mortality rate in children due to the interruptions in providing medical supply chain, delivery, utilization, and provision of health services, healthcare resources, and personnel reallocation.
Limited orientation, influence, and practice to observe these illnesses and diseases fail to prevent and mitigate unwanted growing mortality rate mainly of the young.
Technology and Children Healthcare
Struggling nations are enduring difficulties in obtaining sufficient food and clean water, consistent support in healthcare, and thorough promotion of literacy and awareness.
Access to enough resources on science and technology also contributes to the development and progress of the community in battling this epidemic. Especially in the COVID-19 pandemic, reliable information and source of help among remote areas are necessary. Medical treatment, adequate nutrition, and sanitation would likely improve upon the grant of enough funding for science and technology. It is also a helpful way of promoting education, ensuring that no child is left behind.
Technology is the front-running drive in businesses. Solutions such as cloud computing and data cooling systems are almost mandatory to every company’s success. So with ample budget for science and technology, sustainable development, dissemination of information, and exchange of practical discourse are attainable in the coverage of all countries through the use of the internet and updated technologies.
How the Pandemic Is Affecting Children
In 2020, the United Nations Inter-Agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (UNIGME) reported elevated progress in reducing child mortality.
Even in the presence of threat and risk of the COVID-19 pandemic, countries were able to meet the target survival rate. Response to the needs of resources and action seems to accelerate the result. The objection of attaining consistency awaits the efficacy and effectiveness of the movement.
Every country is exerting intense effort to promote exposure to the transparent status of health conflicts in the community. Progressing solutions are sent paramount to the priority for sustainable development, economic growth, and humanitarian living.
Yet more severe variants of the COVID-19 virus have released awareness to the public. The progressing assessment initiated by UNICEF studying the impact of this disease and the conflicts that might follow (such as mental health crisis) affecting child mortality runs on the bar of government priorities. Working with non-government units locally and globally serves as decent grounds for action in helping effective solutions.
Education on general health, reproductive health and family planning, and formal parenting orientation are among the most effective interventions to this crisis-induced line. Financed by the advocacy of the World Health Organization, the United Nations, independent countries, and other global countries are one with this Millenium Goal to firmly develop health literacy and best practices to circulate effective and efficient sustainability in healthcare and education.
