Originally published July 21 2005
Study: Six million children could be saved by a few more pennies spent on health care
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Daily News Central reports that if each health care user in the 42 countries with the highest child mortality rates were to spend an additional $1.23 on health care, six million children's lives would be saved each year, according to a study by scientists at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Maryland.
The lives of six million children could be saved each year with as little as US$1.23 of additional spending per person on health care in the 42 countries with the highest rates of child mortality.
With extra help from outside donors to bolster their health systems, this is an amount that even the poorest nations could manage to sustain, say the researchers who calculated the figure for a study published in this week's issue of The Lancet.
In 2003, a study published in The Lancet estimated that the lives of 6 million children could be saved each year if 23 proven interventions were universally available in the 42 countries -- primarily in sub-Saharan Africa and south east Asia -- that had 90% of child deaths in 2000.
In the latest study, Robert Black of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Maryland and colleagues assessed the cost of providing these interventions at universal coverage by calculating the sum of unit costs for drugs and materials, delivery costs and program management and support cost, including supervision.
The figure does not include the cost of scaling up health systems to universal coverage, which will require extra outside donations.
"For public-health decision makers, the $5 billion needed to save 6 million child lives annually might be compared with the estimates of $12--20 billion now committed annually to the fight against HIV/AIDS.
These examples suggest that $5 billion is affordable, and reflects a choice being made by policy makers and donors -- a choice that allows 6 million children to die each year, over 16,000 each day," she concludes.
Although finances are only one barrier to saving the lives of vulnerable children, "it is unquestionably a shameful indictment of our global society that when known effective interventions have been developed and could be financed at a cost of this order, millions of children are denied access to them," says Barbara McPake of The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in London in and accompanying comment.
All content posted on this site is commentary or opinion and is protected under Free Speech. Truth Publishing LLC takes sole responsibility for all content. Truth Publishing sells no hard products and earns no money from the recommendation of products. NaturalNews.com is presented for educational and commentary purposes only and should not be construed as professional advice from any licensed practitioner. Truth Publishing assumes no responsibility for the use or misuse of this material. For the full terms of usage of this material, visit www.NaturalNews.com/terms.shtml