Child Mortality

Usually during the springtime, while walking pass the memorial mall, someone will accost me with images of dead fetuses, and a plug for pro-life.  I usually smugly reply what is life and how is that life supported.  Then I go on to ask, whether they support welfare, which usually ends up being NO, because it’s a handout. If then say well if you believe in the sanctity of life then you should also believe in supporting that life financially once it is born. Regardless of your believe, while we sit and debate pro-life or pro-choice, there are children in the US and around the globe dying from lack of nutrition and adequate health care where health and nutrition interventions for both mother and child could have saved a life and reduced the traumatic burden that sometimes leads to psychosis.

In areas hardest hit by infant mortality you have TNC like corporations that will market formula to new mothers. In developing countries, infants who are not breast fed have seven-fold and five-fold risk of death from diarrhea and pneumonia respectively.  They are not getting the necessary immunity from their mothers. Risk factors of child mortality: unhygienic and unsafe conditions, ingestion of unsafe water, inadequate availability of water for hygiene, lack of access to sanitation, 88% of death from diarrhea. Clinical cause of infant mortality around the globe range from Neonatal disorders, diarrhea, pneumonia, malaria, AIDS, measles and other.  Some of these diseases are preventable as there are vaccines, however Neoliberalism and TRIPS have created a political and health structure, Biopolitics, that those in need are not seen as a viable economic profit market, therefore not as valuable. Usually children don’t just die of one disease but multiple or co-morbidity. One co-morbidity that is heavily overlooked is malnutrition and hunger which is prevalent in low-income and middle-income countries.

Child mortality is concentrated in regions such as south Asia specifically, and sub-Saharan Africa. The  top 6 countries with a large proportion of child death in order from greatest to least is India, Nigeria, China, Pakistan, DR Congo, and Ethiopia.  If you look at these countries you would also see that in the last 2-3 decades these counties have been faced with political uprising and unrest as well as occupational environmental exposures.

Health and nutrition interventions should be in place for both mother and child that incorporate some form of education that will lessen the impact of the disease burden. Health and nutrition of the mother is important as if the mother is not healthy then the child in-utero will lack the necessary nutrients to develop appropriately and may not survive, or survive but with DALYS, that place an economic burden on an already strapped economy. I consider the least of these and most vulnerable and where we should put aside profit and politics is with children.