Congressional Budget for the United States Government for Fiscal Year 2005

CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET FOR THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2005

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I am proud to join this afternoon my colleague, Senator Lindsey Graham, in support of this very important amendment. I commend him for his great leadership and great work.

I have been a longstanding supporter of both initiatives: extending TRICARE coverage to members of the Guard and Reserve, and also increasing the level of benefits provided to the Selective Reserve under the Montgomery GI bill. I have introduced and cosponsored several bills to address existing inequities with these specific benefits.

Unfortunately, benefits for our Guard and Reserve simply have not kept pace with the increasing role that these individuals are expected to play today.

I commend Senator Graham, Senator Daschle, and Senator Bunning for their great leadership and their continued commitment to these initiatives. I look forward to working with them through the coming months to make these important initiatives a permanent reality.

This is important work. I know of nothing more important that this Senate will be doing in the months ahead. I look forward to making sure we get the job done.

I thank my colleague for the time this afternoon to talk about another important amendment that I have filed, but I am not calling up at this time. I take a moment to talk about this amendment that is cosponsored by Senator Leahy and Senator Coleman, an amendment that I have sponsored.

We live in a world of 6 billion people, the majority of whom live in developing countries. Theirs is a world where, according to UNICEF, out of every 100 children born, 30 will most likely suffer from malnutrition in their first 5 years of life; 26 will not be immunized against the most basic of childhood diseases; and 19 will lack access to clean, safe drinking water.

This is certainly unconscionable. Yet we have seemingly come to expect and indeed accept this as a way of life in the developing world. The tragedy is that all of this is avoidable. We can do something about it. We can do simple things, really simple things, basic things that can save millions of children's lives every year. The reality is we are not doing enough right now. Candidly, we are tolerating these deaths, and saving these lives simply has not been a priority. Our amendment would change that. And it is, indeed, a step in the right direction.

I take a few minutes this afternoon to share some important statistics about child and maternal mortality. I am often hesitant to come to the floor and talk about statistics. When we hear statistics, it is all too easy to become numb, all too easy to forget the human realities they, in fact, represent. It is important for all to listen to some of these statistics today because they are so unbelievable and so tragic. They represent so many lives, countless lives that could, in fact, be saved; lives that could be saved if we would make the appropriate amount of resources available to people who are in such dire need.

Let's look at the facts. Today, over 10 million children under the age of 5 die each year from preventable, avoidable, and treatable diseases and ailments, including such things as diarrhea, pneumonia, measles, and, yes, malnutrition. Over 10 million children under the age of 5 die from preventable and avoidable diseases. Of those 10 million deaths worldwide, 3.9 million occur in the first 28 days of life. These babies do not even have a shot at living their lives or even getting as old as 2, 3, 4 or 5. Yet two-thirds of these deaths could be prevented if available and affordable interventions had reached the children and mothers who needed them.

Malnutrition contributes to 54 percent of all childhood deaths, and 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, also, because of vitamin A deficiencies.

According to the World Health Organization estimates, at least 30 million infants still do not have access to basic immunization services, and over 4.4 million children died from vaccine-preventable diseases in the year 2001 alone-diseases such as hepatitis, polio, and tetanus. Of all the vaccine-preventable diseases, measles remains the leading childhood killer, claiming the lives of, it is estimated, 750,000 children-more than half of them in Africa alone. Yet vaccine-preventable deaths could actually be cut in half by the year 2005 if these children were receiving proper vaccinations.

Mr. President and my colleagues in the Senate, we can change the course of these developing nations. We can change this tragic human reality. We can start by providing additional money and support for our child survival and maternal health programs. The fact is, this is an emergency situation. There really is not any other way to describe it. Over 10 million children dying each year from preventable and treatable illnesses certainly qualifies as an emergency.

It is the equivalent of roughly 55 fully loaded 747 airplanes crashing every day for a year. Think of that. If that were happening, if that many airplanes were going down each day in this country, or anywhere in the world, we know what our reaction would be. It would be all over the news, all over CNN. We would declare a worldwide tragedy, and we would do something about it.

But these problems facing the developing world cannot be resolved through short-term, temporary, piecemeal assistance. If we are to make any real headway in improving the health of women and children in the long term, we need to take some bold and radical steps, and we also need to be committed to supporting, in the long run, maternal and child health programs, and not just now but next year and the year after and the year after that. Our funding simply cannot be administered in a single dose.

If we could look into the future 10, 20, 30, 40 years from now, we would see what is possible with sustained investments in primary health care and public health systems.

An article recently published in the journal, The Lancet, suggests that providing, for example, vitamin A as a preventing measure could avert as many as 225,000 deaths, and providing oral rehydration therapy could prevent as many as 1,477,000 deaths. Simple interventions and treatment are not expensive. Oral rehydration salt packets cost about 8 cents apiece-8 cents.

For 4 cents per child, two vitamin A capsules could be given every year to children around the world, saving over 650,000 of them from blindness and death. For 30 cents worth of basic antibiotics given to every child with pneumonia, we could prevent 577,000 deaths. I think you get the idea.

Here is another example: Iodine regulates growth and the metabolism. A deficiency in iodine is the primary cause of preventable learning disabilities and brain damage. Iodine can be introduced into the diet by something as simple as fortified salt-iodized salt-something that is in all our kitchens at home. This simple measure would cost only 5 cents per person annually.

Furthermore, our amendment would allocate additional money to help avert maternal and neonatal death and improve maternal health, including the prevention of obstetric fistulas and other types of injuries and disabilities resulting from childbirth in unsafe circumstances.

The fact is, all pregnant women are at risk for injuries and childbirth complications, which is why it is so important to have skilled attendants-midwives, doctors, or nurses-present at birth. Yet only about half of the world's women give birth with a skilled attendant available.

The child survival and maternal health funding provides resources so that USAID can provide training and technical assistance in infection prevention and quality of care, as well as needed equipment and supplies to bring health facilities up to a level where they can provide safe and effective emergency pre- and postnatal care. Clearly, child survival interventions do, in fact, work, and they are the most cost-effective tools we have in the struggle for better global health.

We can and we should invest in these programs as they increase developing countries' access to basic health services-services such as vaccinations, immunizations, micronutrient programs, and vitamin supplements.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I ask for an additional 1 minute.

Mr. GRAHAM of South Carolina. Absolutely.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is recognized for an additional minute.

Mr. DeWINE. If we can make these investments and work toward equal access to health care, we can help ensure that mothers receive proper prenatal care, that children and families receive nutritional counseling and vitamin supplements, and that children receive the necessary immunizations and vaccinations to live healthy lives.

But tragically, if we fail to make a sufficient and sustained investment in the development of public health systems that provide primary care, mothers will continue to die prematurely during childbirth, children will continue to die from preventable diseases and causes, and life expectancies in these developing nations will stagnate or perhaps even decrease. This is not acceptable.

Mr. President, adoption of this amendment-as I said, it has been filed but not yet called up-will go a long way to save so many children's lives around the world. Therefore, I would ask my colleagues, when this amendment is called up, to join my colleagues in voting in favor of it.

Again, I thank my colleague for his great work to help our Guard and Reserves in relation to what we talked about earlier today. I thank him for his good work in this area.

I yield the floor.