News

South Africa ‘failing in child health’

28 July 2010

South Africa is one of 12 countries that has failed to reduce child mortality since 1990, according to the 2009/10 SA Child Gauge released on Tuesday.

Children were paying the price for the country’s failure to progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which aimed to reduce poverty, hunger and disease by 2015 and to ensure children’s rights to survival, health and development, it said.

The report found that while South Africa was making progress on a number of MDGs, the targets for reducing child hunger, HIV, tuberculosis and child mortality were not being met.

Over one in three children did not have access to basic sanitation or adequate drinking water on site.

The growth of nearly one in five children was stunted, according to the most recent national food consumption survey in 2005.

Mortality audits by the Child Healthcare Problem Identification Programme indicated that more than 60 percent of children who died in hospital between 2005 and 2007 were underweight.

Director of Management Sciences for Health in SA, Nomathemba Mazaleni said community-based services were important in improving healthcare for children.

Community health workers were being trained, in rural areas where clinics were faraway, in preventing and treating childhood illness, and were trained to recognise when to seek emergency care, she said.

Given sufficient funding, these initiatives should have a positive impact on child health.

Read more at Independent Online.