International Save the Children Alliance
Above: Almost 800,000 Zimbabwean children have been orphaned by AIDS. Josephine is one of these children. She takes care of her five younger siblings and another young orphan.
Above: Midwife Nguyen Thi Hoa washes a newborn baby in the Quang Tri Provincial Hospital, Vietnam, built with Save the Children funding.
The difference for children
In Liberia we immunised more than 600,000 children and refurbished 11 centres serving thousands of families’ medical needs.
In Colombia, along with a major radio station, we trained 40 DJs to broadcast safe sex information to young people.
Over the last three years in Swaziland, our school feeding initiative has reached almost 37,000 children. This has improved attendance and exam results as well as overall health.
Save the Children saves lives by expanding access to health care for children and mothers. Across the world, we work in partnership with governments and other organisations to tackle the HIV/AIDS pandemic and to improve community health services.
HIV and AIDS affect children and young people most of all. Half of all new HIV infections – around 6,000 a day – are among young people aged 14–24. Every day, almost 2,000 babies are infected with HIV during pregnancy, birth or through breastfeeding. Nine out of ten children living with HIV/AIDS are African, but no part of the world remains untouched by the pandemic.
Save the Children adopts a number of approaches across the world to tackle the spread of HIV/AIDS. We work with local partners to prevent infection by educating children and families. We find relevant ways of engaging children and young people, such as peer education using street theatre.
Our experience shows that improving the length and quality of their parents’ lives makes a real difference for children. This is why we enable local communities to provide care and support to parents as well as children living with HIV/AIDS. Save the Children also trains community health workers, home carers and social workers to address the psychological health of children affected by the disease.
Every year, 4 million babies die in the first month of life. In December, we were awarded a US$60 million, six-year grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to continue preventing newborn illness and death in 18 countries across Asia and Africa as part of our long-term Saving Newborn Lives initiative. In five years this initiative has benefited more than 20 million mothers and babies through treatment for infections, health education and access to skilled midwife care.
Children of all ages benefit from our simple, affordable health interventions, such as antibiotics to treat pneumonia, oral rehydration therapy to treat diarrhoea and insecticide-treated bed nets to prevent malaria. In Africa and Asia alone, we immunised hundreds of thousands of children in 2005. We support community health committees that encourage practices such as better hygiene, sanitation and diets, leading to improved child health in many countries.
