Jordan Times
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Queen Rania focuses on child survival
AMMAN (JT) — Her Majesty Queen Rania on Monday
addressed the imminent challenge of achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
at a forum in New York City, with a strong focus on the need to reduce child
mortality.
“I feel a sense of urgency when it comes to MDG 4... [because] none of our
children can be secure in a world where millions of children are at risk,” Queen
Rania said during the Child Survival Symposium.
The Queen highlighted the plight of Lebanese children this summer: “I think of
what children in Lebanon endured this summer in a war that claimed over three
hundred of their lives. A war that turned their playgrounds into battlegrounds,
and classrooms they thought they had left behind for the summer, into makeshift
bedrooms.”
The Queen also spoke of the many child safety programmes she supported over the
past year including a hospital in India where she administered vaccines to
new-born babies and a maternity ward in South Africa where doctors had developed
a low-cost approach to incubation.
“With MDG 4, the world has declared we will move from chance to choice. We have
the resources to save children’s live — and we will choose to use them,” she
said.
Because of each country’s specific resources and needs, the Millennium Project
has outlined key recommendations and has left it up to each nation to coordinate
with public and private organisations on how to best achieve the goals.
As a board member of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI)
Fund, Queen Rania stressed the role of vaccines and immunisation efforts in
protecting children against deadly diseases.
“By catalysing funding and creative collaboration — among governments, NGOs,
pharmaceutical companies, and international organisations — GAVI’s efforts have
provided well over 100 million more children with protection against deadly
diseases, saving 1.7 million lives in the last five years alone and spurring
development of new vaccines,” said the Queen.
Jordan has already made significant strides in tackling the problem of child
mortality by opening new mother and child centres, carrying out inoculation
programmes against infectious diseases such as measles, hepatitis and tetanus,
in addition to conducting awareness campaigns and sponsoring school health
programmes.
Queen Rania cited a joint study by UNICEF and the World Health Organisation
which found that for $1 billion per year, 10 million additional lives could be
saved through maternal immunisations between now and 2015. “Frankly, [this] is
an investment that we cannot afford to ignore because the very nature of
infectious disease in our interconnected world puts not only innocent children
at risk, but their communities, their countries and well beyond,” she said.
“Surely, one billion dollars to save 10 million lives is a price tag we can
afford.”
“We can make child survival a reality — not just for babies born to loving arms
and stable homes, but for babies born ‘in places where we would not be caught
dead.’ And, maybe, one of those precious children will become the next Louis
Pasteur — the child who uses his or her life to better the lives of us all,” the
Queen added.
After the opening remarks by the Queen and other leaders, a panel of health
experts debated various methods of achieving MDG 4.
UNICEF, the government of Norway and the medical magazine, The Lancet, hosted
the one-day symposium.