About the campaign
When was the campaign launched?
Child Health Now is the World Vision Partnership’s first global advocacy campaign. The campaign was launched globally in November 2009 and is now being run globally and in 30 National Offices, supported by the financial investment of 10 Support Offices. In addition, over 10 Support Offices run their own national level Child Health Now campaigns, targeting their governments for policy change.
What are we about?
Child Health Now is World Vision’s five-year global advocacy campaign aiming to see an end to the more than six million deaths of children under five each year. It is calling on governments and supporters to play their part in a global movement that ensures children access to nutritious food, clean water, and life-saving health services.
We are at a critical juncture in the effort to achieve lasting progress in child and maternal health. The number of children dying each year under the age of five has fallen from 12 million to fewer than seven million in the past two decades – a dramatic 42% reduction. Globally, maternal mortality has declined by 47% but this remains far below the target reduction of 75%.
However, despite remarkable progress by some low and middle incomes countries, it is clear that many will not meet the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) targets for improving child and maternal health by 2015. At the current rate of reduction in under-five mortality the world will only meet MDG 4, to reduce child mortality by two-thirds, by 2028 – 13 years after the deadline. To achieve MDG 4 by 2015 an additional 3.5 million children’s lives must be saved between 2013 and 2015. As we gear up for the final push to the deadline of the MDGs in December 2015, our focus is on accelerating the progress we’ve made, and reducing the number of children and mothers we lose every year.
Where are we going?
In each setting or country, the Child Health Now campaign is becoming increasingly tailored to fit with the particular characteristics of that locale. For example,for the Global Week of Action 2014, the mobilisation will call for more funding for health in the national budget in one country whilst calling on the government for accountability on Nutrition for Growth commitments in another country. For the Global Week of Action 2014 the campaign demands will be contextualised so that the mobilisation provides an additional 'push' on the national campaign demands and reinforces those calls to decision-makers.