MRS. SANDRA NOGUERA - SIXTH GRADE

Today is Thursday and you can help reach Millennium Development Goal #4 and # 5 by helping to improve maternal health and reduce child mortality by 2015!

a young boy suffering from malaria
DID YOU KNOW 1200 CHILDREN DIED THIS HOUR FROM PREVENTABLE DISEASES

30,000 children every day die from diseases that could be treated if they lived in another part of the world. In the United States, and many other countries in the world, children are given vaccinations keeping them safe from diseases such as polio and small pox, but this doesn't happen everywhere.

Making sure kids are vaccinated for certain diseases is improving in developing nations. Now the world can say the crippling effects of polio have almost been wiped from the face of the earth, but this is not true for many other preventable illnesses.

Many children contract deadly bacterial infections because they are exposed to open sewage. Lack of proper sewage treatment means many people must throw their waste into the gutters spilling over onto where children play.

The lack of clean water is also a major factor in the spread of disease. In many places around the world there is no clean water to drink. If you drink dirty water you can become from very sick from all of the bad bacteria hidden inside of it.

If there is no clean water to drink that also means there is no clean water to wash your hands. When kids come inside to eat, after playing outside all day, they don't even have clean water to wash their hands. Germs travel from their hands to their mouths making it easy for them to become sick.

When bad bacteria enters your body, either through unclean drinking water or your unclean hands touching your mouth, it can give you diarrhea. Chronic diarrhea kills 3.5 million people each year. Most of those deaths are children.

Proper medical care and immunization is the key to preventing disease and education is the key to understanding how to stay healthy. Survival rates are twice as high if you are educated than it is for those children and mothers who have no education.

…AND ONE WOMAN EVERY MINUTE DIES

Proper pre-natal medical care for mothers-to-be would also reduce childhood deaths and death of the mother during child birth.

Pre-natal care is the type of doctor care a pregnant mother gets before she has her baby. The doctor will make sure the mother is eating well and getting all the right vitamins. The doctor will also check to see if the baby is growing at the right rate inside the mother and if something goes wrong the doctor will be able to help keep the mother and baby safe.