Health Education to Villages: Mother & Child Nutrition, Diarrhoea, Diarrhea, Breastfeeding, Water, Sanitation, Hygiene, Dehydration and Oral Rehydration

Focus on Diarrhoea,
Dehydration & Rehydration

Mother and Child Nutrition
& Malnutrition

In developing countries, one child in 10 dies before reaching their fifth birthday, compared with 1 in 143 in high-income countries.

UN Declaration of the ... Rights of the Child

The right to affection, love, and understanding. The right to adequate nutrition and medical care. The right to free education. The right to full opportunity for play and recreation. The right to a name and nationality. The right to special care, if handicapped. The right to be among the first to receive relief in times of disaster. The right to learn to be a useful member of society and to develop individual abilities. The right to be brought up in a spirit of peace and universal brotherhood. The right to enjoy these rights, regardless of race, colour, sex, religion, national, or social origin.

Causes of Child Deaths
Worldwide 73% of the 10.6 million yearly deaths in children younger than age 5 years: pneumonia (19%), diarrhoea (18%), malaria (8%), neonatal pneumonia or sepsis (10%), preterm delivery (10%), and asphyxia at birth (8%). More than half of all child deaths are associated with malnutrition, which weakens the body's resistance to illness. Millions more survive only to face diminished futures, unable to develop to their full potential.

A Need for Health Education
Many of these deaths can be avoided if parents and caregivers understand what to do when illness strikes and how to recognize the danger signs that signal the need for medical help. Facts for Life presents, in simple language, the most authoritative information about practical, effective and low-cost ways to protect children's lives and health. Everyone has the right to know this information.

Focus
The aim of HETV is to establish and promote health educational programs that will provide rapid and long-term capacity-building to improve health and quality of life, and will give mothers and communities more control over their health status. Health gains associated with safe drinking water can be achieved by providing people with simple, affordable technologies, such as chlorination, filtration, solar disinfection and improved storage in their homes. Worldwide, surveys have shown that hand-washing alone reduces the instance of diarrhoea by as much as 43 percent.

Partnered with national and state governments, we work to assist in educating mothers and children, teachers and students, doctors and village health workers, and a variety of community leaders, in the targeted areas of health, water, hygiene, and sanitation.

Plan: Health Education in Maharashtra
An integrated approach to reduce childhood mortality and morbidity due to diarrhoea and dehydration; Maharashtra, India 2005 – 2010

Call to Action on diarrhoeal disease

With more resources and effective implementation of available health, water and sanitation solutions, we can save millions of children right now. That diarrhoea remains a leading cause of death among children around the world exemplifies the urgency of reinvigorating efforts to improve child health and human development. more >>

Malnourishment in India

More than 5,000 Indian children below five years die every day due to malnourishment or lack of basic micronutrients like Vitamin A, iron, iodine, zinc or folic acid.

Overall, India hosts 57 million - or more than a third - of the world's 146 million undernourished children. 45.9 per cent of India's under-three kids are underweight, 39 per cent are stunted, 20 per cent severely malnourished, 80 per cent anaemic while infant mortality hovers at 67 per 1,000. 440 million people languish at the bottom of the economic pyramid in India and about 500,000 children are born deformed each year due to vitamin/mineral deficiencies.

National Family Health Survey, India 2005-2006 - NFHS-3

World Health Statistics 2009

World Health Statistics 2009 contains WHO's annual compilation of data from its 193 Member States, and includes a summary of progress towards the health-related Millennium Development Goals and targets. This edition also contains a new section on reported cases of selected infectious diseases.

Progress on the health-related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Fact sheet N°290

"Malnourishment severely retards a child's cognitive, physical and emotional growth and has a cascading effect on his/her productivity in adult years." -- Dr Suresh Kasana, New Delhi

"India should be worried." Experts reiterate that child malnutrition is not only responsible for 22 per cent of India's disease burden - and for 50 per cent of the 2.3 million child deaths in India -- but is also a serious economic hazard. Neeta Lal reports.