The main goal of MDG no. Child Mortality is to reduce by two-thirds the under five years old mortality around the globe. In comparison to many of the other millennium development goals, Child Mortality is easily measured.
According to statisticians of the United Nations the goal of reducing by two-thirds the U5M (Under Five mortality rate) will not be accomplished by 2015, but it is in my opinion that this is not a reason to call this a failure. U5M has dropped worldwide from 11. 9 million in 1990 to 7. 7 million in 2010.The plan to reduce U5M is through prevention of diseases by vaccination, improving the health system of many countries, developing universal access to care, training qualified staff, promoting safer water, and improving nutrition and hygienic environments.
But the means have not been the best ones because it could be said that the United Nations have tried to impose medicine and vaccination in developing countries. Religious Leaders of Sub-Saharan countries encourage their people not to take the vaccination or any of the health care given by the United Nations or any organization.These cultural barriers inhibit access for the means necessary to save all the children that are dying every day. Economics and MDGs are linked in two ways: Indirectly, through the growth of the country.
And directly, through certain elements of governance that affect the attainment of MDGs. Countries such as Egypt have invested a lot of money in this particular millennium goal. But other countries such as Chad have not been able to improve their U5M because they’re too busy fighting their ethnic conflicts, political nstability and the poverty that affects 80% of the population. As it has previously been said, the connectedness between all the millennium goals is crucial.
Actions to improve nutrition, gender equality, health, education and household incomes are necessary. These “periphery” countries are being helped by the “core” ones providing medicine and all the other things that have been previously mentioned but the problem is that is not as simple as that. In words of a Chinese proverb: Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will never starve.
The Structural Adjustment Programs that the IMF has given to developing nations to accelerate their economy in order to become developed has not been successful because the IMF is biased to a westernonly economic view. It has been said many times that the consumption of the United States could not be imitated by the rest of the world because we lack the resources to do so. Therefore, the modernization theory and its series of evolutionary stages do not apply to all the regions of the world. In those subsaharan countries where the U5M is very high, MDG 1 should also improve in order to MDG 4 to succeed.Inoculation of the inhabitants of a region shouldn’t be just an optional service provided by the United Nations, its importance should be taught to the population by the local government.
If the population is fully aware of its importance, they would demand their government to provide them with vaccines. Even if the government doesn’t have the enough resources to immunize the whole population, a growing concern for immunization will save many many lifes and when organizations such as The Gates foundation, or the UN or UNICEF shows up with vaccines they wouldn’t be rejected just for some cultural issues.
