Half of child deaths in Africa “preventable”

Fifty percent of child deaths in Africa are preventable by simple community health care, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said. In a statement received by IRIN this week, IFRC said 19 percent of the deaths among African children under five years of age were due to acute respiratory infections, while 20 percent were due to diarrhoea and 7 percent to measles. “It isn’t about money, or technology, or a lack of facilities. It is mostly about lack of awareness,” senior IFRC officer Roger Bracke told a meeting in Nairobi of some 15 Red Cross and Red Crescent national societies from east Africa, the Horn, the Great Lakes and the Indian Ocean islands. “If African mothers knew a simple solution of salt, sugar and water could rehydrate their infants when they suffered from diarrhoea you would cut deaths among children under five by ten percent immediately,” he said. The meeting approved an IFRC health strategy for the first decade of the 21st century, the statement added.