Child survival project launched

A major child survival programme has been launched to cut mortality rates and increase access to health care for mothers and their children, UN agencies said on Friday. Six million children in Ethiopia are being targeted under the initiative launched by the UN's Children's Fund (UNICEF) and World Food Programme (WFP). The project, known as Enhanced Outreach Strategy (EOS), is a three-year child survival programme in seven regions of Ethiopia. Some of the country's most remote villages have been specifically targeted under the scheme funded by the Canadian government. "The EOS activities are ensuring that mothers and children receive basic preventative health care that is their fundamental human right," Bjorn Ljungqvist, head of UNICEF in Ethiopia, said. "By taking health care to the village level, working with community volunteers, we ensure that every mother and child gets the care they are entitled to." "We are ensuring that preventable diseases are treated before they become more serious and endanger children's survival," he added. An estimated 140 out of every 1,000 children will die in Ethiopia before they reach their fifth birthday, the Ministry of Health says. Half a million children under the age of five die each year because of childhood killers like pneumonia, diarrhoea, malaria, measles and malnutrition. Ethiopia also has, at 230,000, one of the highest number of children under 14 infected with the HIV/AIDS virus. Half of these are girls and it is increasing by 80,000 a year. During EOS screening of children for diseases, malnourished youngsters are referred to WFP for supplementary feeding and mothers receive education on nutrition. The initial phase of the programme has been launched in some of the country's most remote villages in the Southern Nations, Nationalities and People's Region - a traditional breadbasket area in southern Ethiopia which was hard hit by poor rains in 2003. The project will later be expanded to Tigray, Amhara, Oromiya, Somali, Harar and Dire Dawa regions.