On her first trip to Africa, world tennis star Serena Williams has urged all pregnant women and children in Ghana to protect themselves from malaria, writes UN News Service.
On the last day of the country’s biggest integrated child health campaign, led by the Ministry of Health and Ghana Health Service, with support from Japan, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and other organizations, Ms. Williams distributed free insecticide-treated bed nets to children under two, administered vitamin A supplements and helped out with other assistance in a deprived community in Greater Accra.
Malaria is the number one killer of children in Ghana, claiming one-quarter of all under-five deaths every year. The consistent use of treated bed nets could reduce child mortality in Ghana by 20 per cent, but usage by children under five and pregnant women remains low.
The vaccinations, vitamin A supplementation and free bed nets provided through the national child health campaign, which ran during the first week in November, could help to save 20,000 young lives over the next year. They are critical interventions in a country where some 80,000 children die every year, mostly from preventable causes.
On the other side of the world, UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and international pop star Shakira called on everyone in El Salvador, which has one of the highest rates of social violence, to come together and stamp out the problem as she joined more than 8,000 children and young people on Sunday in a “March for Peace.”
The event launched UNICEF’s “Make the Difference by Not Being Indifferent” campaign.
Violence is one of the principal reasons why children don’t go to school. It’s also one of the causes of the alarming school dropout rates.
Shakira’s involvement in the campaign comes as UNICEF and its partners are preparing for the regional launch of the Secretary-General’s Study on Violence Against Children and Adolescents, which was released in New York last month.
Presently El Salvador is undergoing a social crisis where ethical and moral values are increasingly ignored and forgotten, according to UNICEF. Violence indicators cited in the UN study rank El Salvador among the countries with the highest index of social violence in the world.
Kilde: www.un.org
