Child Survival and Material Health

CHILD SURVIVAL AND MATERNAL HEALTH

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, the Senate Appropriations Committee this week took an important step. That step was in providing $275 million to the Child Survival and Maternity Health Programs. I congratulate the full committee for this work. I also congratulate the subcommittee, chaired by Senator McConnell, and Ranking Member Leahy, for the bill they reported which contained this money. I want to use this occasion and the passage of this bill--in the future, it will be coming to the Senate floor with this language--to share some important statistics about child and maternal mortality.

It is so very important that we understand what this money can do. I am often hesitant to recite statistics on the floor of the Senate because when you hear them repeatedly, it is all too easy to become numb to statistics, to forget the human realities that they do, in fact, represent.

It is important for all of us and for the American people to listen to some of these statistics because they are so unbelievable and so tragic and because they do represent human lives. These are lives that can be saved, lives that can be saved by making resources available to developing countries and people who are in such great need. Let me recite some of these statistics.

Today, over 10 million children under the age of 5 die each year from preventable and treatable diseases and ailments. These include diarrhea, pneumonia, measles, and, yes, malnutrition. It is an unbelievable figure. Of those 10 million deaths worldwide, 3.9 million occur in the first 28 days of life. These babies don't even have a shot at getting as old as 2 or 3 or 4 or 5. Yet two-thirds of these deaths could be prevented if available and affordable intervention had reached the children and their mothers who need them. Malnutrition contributes to 54 percent of all childhood deaths. As many as 3 million children die annually as a result of vitamin A deficiency. An estimated 400,000 cases of childhood blindness are reported each year, children who are condemned to going about their lives blind. These are preventable. Of the 130 million babies born each year, about 4 million die in the first 4 weeks of life. In poor communities many babies who die are unnamed, unrecorded, indicating the perceived inevitability of their deaths. Four hundred fifty newborn children die every hour, mainly from preventable causes.

According to World Health Organization estimates, over 4.4 million children died from vaccine-preventable diseases in 2001, diseases such as hepatitis, polio, and tetanus. Of all the vaccine-preventable diseases, measles remain the leading childhood killer, claiming the lives of 745,000 children, more than half of them in Africa.

Such staggering numbers of children dying from preventable diseases is unacceptable. It is up to us--the Congress, the Senate, people in the developed world, the United States, around the world--to change this tragic human reality. We have an obligation to make this change because we have the know-how, we have the resources to prevent these deaths.

The Lancet, a British medical journal which ran a series of articles last year about child survival, just published a new study indicating that the lives of an estimated 6 million children could be saved for as little as $1.23 per child. Yes, for as little as $1.23 per child in the 42 countries with the highest rates of child mortality, 23 lifesaving interventions could be made universally available. These interventions, many of them as basic as vitamin A or zinc supplements, are critical to preventing the deaths of millions of children.

The full Appropriations Committee has agreed to provide this $275 million for child survival in the Foreign Operations bill. This is very significant. It is an important step in our efforts to improve the health of children around the world. This funding will save lives. I urge my colleagues to support this funding level when the bill comes to the floor. I urge my colleagues, when the bill then goes to conference committee, to keep this funding in that bill as well.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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