Press Releases

Washington, D.C. – Congressman Donald M. Payne, Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health, convened a hearing entitled, “Child Survival: The Unfinished Agenda to Reduce Global Child Mortality.”  The hearing lauded the progress made in reducing child mortality.  However, Representative Payne expressed concern over President Bush’s Fiscal Year 2009 budget request which greatly reduces funding for child survival and called for a greater response by the United States government and other international organizations.

Every day 27,000 children under the age of 5 die, mostly from preventable diseases and conditions. Factors such as malnutrition, unsafe drinking water, and inadequate access to vaccines contribute greatly to global child mortality.  The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) recently released The State of the World’s Children 2008: Child Survival, which reports that annual deaths among children under 5 fell to 9.7 million a year, the first time below 10 million since 1960, when data began to be compiled.  While the knowledge of how to prevent most of these deaths, the necessary resources have not been spent to do so. 

“The fact that 9.7 million children are dying each year of preventable diseases sends a clear message to us all – we absolutely must do much more,” Payne commented during the hearing.  “Those figures represent human beings; little children who deserve a shot at life.”

In 2000, the United Nations adopted eight Millennium Development Goals (MDG’s) and called on member states to provide the necessary resources to reach key targets by 2015.  The fourth goal is to reduce child mortality by two-thirds.  “Given the fact that malnutrition caused by chronic hunger leads to the deaths of more than 5 million children each year, we cannot reach this goal without making strides in the first Millennium Development Goal – halving extreme poverty and hunger,” Payne stated.  “This underscores the need for an integrated approach.”