Above: Almost 800,000 Zimbabwean children have been orphaned by AIDS. Josephine is one of these children. She takes care of her five younger siblings and another young orphan.
Above: Midwife Nguyen Thi Hoa washes a newborn baby in the Quang Tri Provincial Hospital, Vietnam, built with Save the Children funding.
The difference for children
In Liberia we immunised more than 600,000 children and refurbished 11 centres serving thousands of families’ medical needs.
In Colombia, along with a major radio station, we trained 40 DJs to broadcast safe sex information to young people.
Over the last three years in Swaziland, our school feeding initiative has reached almost 37,000 children. This has improved attendance and exam results as well as overall health.
Save the Children has a 90-year track record in improving children's health. We save lives by expanding access to health care for children and mothers. Across the world, we work in partnership with governments and other organisations to tackle the HIV/AIDS pandemic and to improve community health services.
Every year, 4 million babies die in the first month of life. Most deaths among young children result from birth complications, pneumonia, diarrhoea, malaria and measles.
Measures that are often taken for granted in wealthy countries - such as vaccines, antibiotics and oral rehydration therapy - can save millions of lives for relatively little cost. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, we have immunised thousands of children against measles.
Our Saving Newborn Lives programme has helped more than 20 million women and babies since 2000. In Pakistan, we have shown that simple measures in the home can reduce infant deaths by 15 per cent. We are also working with the government to develop a national maternal, newborn and child health strategy.
In 2008, we involved people around the world in our campaigning work. In the UK, supporters urged Prime Minister Gordon Brown to prioritise saving children's lives and, in Afghanistan, campaigning by 11,000 supporters led to a meeting with the Ministry of Health to discuss child mortality.
This year, we have continued to put child survival and health on the international policy agenda, notably at the G8 meeting in Italy.
Read the Briefing for the Day of the African Child [PDF, 644 Kb]
HIV and AIDS affect children and young people most of all. Half of all new HIV infections – around 6,000 a day – are among young people aged 14–24. Every day, almost 2,000 babies are infected with HIV during pregnancy, birth or through breastfeeding. Nine out of ten children living with HIV/AIDS are African, but no part of the world remains untouched by the pandemic.
Save the Children adopts a number of approaches across the world to tackle the spread of HIV/AIDS. We work with local partners to prevent infection by educating children and families. We find relevant ways of engaging children and young people, such as peer education using street theatre.
Our experience shows that improving the length and quality of their parents’ lives makes a real difference for children. This is why we enable local communities to provide care and support to parents as well as children living with HIV/AIDS. Save the Children also trains community health workers, home carers and social workers to address the psychological health of children affected by the disease.
Angola - We have vaccinated 55,000 children against killer diseases.
Liberia - We're providing free healthcare to help 237,503 children and their families.
Afghanistan - Our highly successful nutrition rehabilitation Pilot program will have a lasting impact.
Bangladesh - We are leading a 17-partner consortium that seeks to prevent the spread of HIV among adolescents and young people ages 10 to 24.
Guatemala - We're training health personnel and community health volunteers to provide early postnatal care visits to mothers and newborn.
We partner with the US Government to deliver large-scale programmess that accelerate progress toward the achievement of Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5.
Pneumonia - See a video on community case management in Ethiopia.
