By SAJIDAH KUTTY

TORONTO, ONTARIO –Child mortality around the world is at its lowest since the U.N. began recording such figures (1960). It fell below the 10 million mark.

That is sad in itself – that it is having 9.7 million children die as opposed to 10 million which makes us believe we have achieved something grand.

Now, for the real saddest part: a mosquito net, a vitamin A pill per year, breastfeeding education and a vaccination is perhaps all it would have taken to ensure that many of those 9.7 million did not die last year.

A Canadian-funded grassroots pilot project in several West African countries demonstrated this simple formula cut child mortality rates by 20%.

Stephanie Nolen has a comprehensive story on this in the Globe and Mail: Simple as That: Child Mortality is at a Record Low. She follows health worker, Alfred Malunga, on his rounds of 16 villages/communities in Malawi as he distributes mosquito nets (staving off malaria – one of the biggest killer of children around the world), giving vaccinations and get this, handing out a capsule of vitamin A per child per year (sometimes twice a year) because this is “enough to boost their immune systems so that if they do [get ill], they are much less likely to die”.

One or 2 vitamin A pills a year? A $2 mosquito net per family? Telling women to solely breastfeed for 6 months? And a vaccination? This is all it took for Malawi, one of the poorest countries in the world, to cut child death rates by a third in such a short time?

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