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Aid worker's blog: Child health in Sudan
17 Nov 2009
By Dan Teng'o
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FILE PHOTO: Dan Teng'o skips rope with children in Sudan in 2006.
Photo by Jon Warren.
©2009 World Vision International |
Many reports have been written about life in the hamlets, villages, displacement and refugee camps in Africa. Those reports are incomplete without these two words: child deaths.
In many places where I have been in East Africa, child deaths have become so common, that this sad situation has become a way of life.
Lots of mothers, including some in my extended family, have powerlessly watched their children die of preventable and treatable diseases such as malaria and pneumonia.
Sudan
The toll is huge. Out of every three women that I’ve interviewed in villages and displacement camps in Sudan over the past year, one has lost at least one child. Many have lost more.
Most of the women told me that they lost their children to diarrhoea, respiratory illnesses, malaria and other easily preventable diseases.
When I visited World Vision’s clinic in Duma, a settlement for displaced and war-affected communities in South Darfur, early this year, I was stopped cold by stories of women who had lost up to six children to diseases that could easily be prevented. Their tales brought tears to my eyes.
Heartbreaking stories
Husseina Mohammed, 22, had lost a child to diarrhoea. So had Medina Issa, 31. And so on and so forth. Bombarded with their sad stories, I felt myself slipping into despair.
Unfortunately, the story is heartbreakingly similar in many African villages. Many children’s lives are far too brief. Their hearts stop beating far too early.
A cruel clock starts ticking in the background the moment a child is born. Various preventable diseases often turn many potential years into precious few weeks or months.
Fear
My stomach knots in fear every time I go out to gather stories of women in impoverished communities. The fear of learning of preventable child deaths in their families always looms large.
I often ask God for the strength to somehow find happiness again after listening to laments about avoidable deaths of children. So many children – about 24,000 globally – are left to die every day, yet they can easily be saved.
Hope
Despite this grim situation, there’s a hope that never fades even in the African villages worst-hit by preventable child deaths. Almost every mother that I’ve spoken to believes that her next child will survive.
Given their often difficult circumstances, it’s not always easy to be hopeful, but they choose to do it because they want their children to live.
Though their eyes radiate hope for healthier, longer lives for their children, many mothers in East African villages are still weighed down by daily threats to their children’s lives – limited access to health care, lack of proper food, dirty water, among other problems.
Saving lives
I’ve seen World Vision saving many children’s lives in Sudan and other parts of Africa by providing education about good health practices, primary health care, food and clean water and other basic services.
If we ratchet up the simple solutions, we will not only wrest the lives of many children from the wrath of preventable diseases, but also give their mothers real hope for a better future.
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