Study finds that UNICEF program in Africa fails to save more children
By Maria Cheng (CP) – Jan 11, 2010
Source: The Canadian Press
LONDON — A UNICEF program that spent $27 million to decrease child deaths from disease in West Africa has failed, according to a new study that found a higher survival rate in some regions that weren’t included in the program.
The U.N. children’s agency pursued strategies like vaccinating children, giving them vitamin A pills and distributing bednets to protect against malaria from 2001 to 2005 in parts of 11 countries.
The aim was to reduce the death rate by at least 25 per cent by the end of 2006.
An analysis of the program in Benin, Ghana and Mali found children in areas where it wasn’t in effect had a better chance of surviving past age five than children who were covered by it. The study was published online Tuesday in the British medical journal Lancet.
It is one of the few studies to evaluate whether U.N. health programs really save lives. Related work published last year found that it wasn’t clear what the world had gotten from U.N. initiatives that cost nearly US$200 billion over the past two decades, and that some programs may have been counterproductive.
Jennifer Bryce of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and colleagues analyzed data from national questionnaires to compare changes in areas targeted by UNICEF’s “Accelerated Child Survival and Development” program with those that weren’t.
UNICEF chose districts with high child death rates to implement its program. That could explain why it failed, since the agency was working in regions with especially bad health systems, Bryce said. She said child deaths fell both in regions where the program was implemented and those where it wasn’t. Similar UNICEF strategies were used in all parts of the three countries, not just those in the special program, which was supposed to be more intense and more comprehensive.
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