Millions of children dying from preventable diseases.

Updated August 31, 2010 13:03:19

One child dies every three seconds from easily preventable causes.

But despite that shocking statistic much progress has been made in the past decade.

Presenter: Sen Lam
Speaker: Jasmine Whitbread, global chief executive officer of Save the Children

WHITBREAD: Well we're focussing on a global campaign equally important here in the Asian region to reduce the number of children dying before their fifth birthday, so that's newborns and under fives who are still dying at a really shocking rate; one every three seconds. And from really easily preventable causes, things like diarrhoea, missing a measles vaccination, malaria, not sleeping under a bed-net. These are things, it's not rocket science to prevent them, and in the 21st century we think enough is enough, so we have a big global campaign to address that, which of course is absolutely in line with Millenium Development Goal Four, which is to reduce by two-thirds the number of children dying before their fifth birthday.

LAM: So what is the key obstacle here? Is it just a simple case of not being able to reach these children?

WHITBREAD: Well a lot of progress has been made and what we're trying to do is highlight where the good examples of best practice are, where countries are getting on track to meeting that Millenium Development Goal. So for example in Laos where Save Children Australia has been supporting the local government and local communities in quite remote areas of the country over the last several years to roll out local community based healthcare approaches, where you have volunteers who are living and working in the communities, who've been trained up on a ten-week training course and then there's some in-service training as well, who will be able to support mothers as they prepare to give birth, and then afterwards to take care of their children appropriately, as we were just hearing breastfeeding is terribly important as is clean water. Other basics, so these aren't really necessarily sophisticated fixes as I said, some of them are really basic things that need to happen. But it is amazing how these programs aren't being rolled out more widely, and so by talking about the success stories, and in this particular province we've seen a reduction in child mortality by 80 per cent, rolling that out across the rest of the country means that Laos is on track to meet the Millenium Development Goals. It's sharing that, the examples of what's working is what needs to happen, and making sure there is political commitment and that governments who've made pledges to support that kind of work with the financing, live up to those commitments.

LAM: And some people believe that the UN's target of reducing under five mortality rates by two-thirds in five years time is not achievable. What do you think?

WHITBREAD: Well I think that it's frankly shocking that we've got child deaths at the rate that we have. So that's nearly nine-million children around the world, that's the equivalent to the populations of Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide dying every single year. The world shouldn't be tolerating that. If you talk to ordinary people, ordinary Australians as I've been doing this week, nobody can tolerate children dying, of completely preventable causes. So why don't we do something about it, and frankly two-thirds is the least that we can do. Huge progress has been made, I mean since the 1960s when I was born, that number has halved. So big progress has been made, the question is now with just five years left to go and the fact that we are off target and the progress although it's being made is too slow, what do we do? Do we give up or do we re-double our efforts and put every last sensible effort into coming as close to meeting that target as possible.

LAM: And Jasmine for the children who do make it past the age of five, what's being done about universal primary education for children? I mean that's one of the MDGs as well?

WHITBREAD: Yeah that's another good case in point in terms of sort of glass half full or half empty, so at the beginning of the Millenium, in the year 2000, there was a big global education conference I was at actually, and all the talk was about the 140-million children who were out of school at that time. And I remember thinking, I was new in this sector, and I was thinking gosh, that's a huge number, how's that ever going to happen, it's very ambitious. But ten years later and the number has almost halved, there's only 72-million children out of school. Now that's still a big number and it's not on track for getting all those 72-million into school in the last five years, but just shows what can be done and what more can be done if everybody works together and pulls together towards meeting that target.

LAM: And just very briefly are girls still disadvantaged, are female children less likely to go to school?

WHITBREAD: Yes girls are still disadvantaged, both in terms of mortality rates and going to school, and so programs when they're being designed have to understand that and design that into the program from the outset otherwise there's a risk of perpetuating that inequity.