Child health

More than 10 million children in developing countries die before reaching their fifth birthday each year. Roughly 70 percent of these deaths are caused by preventable conditions: pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria, measles, and malnutrition. To put it bluntly, every day 20,000 children are killed by conditions that could be prevented or cured with simple, affordable remedies – vaccinations, bednets, food, clean drinking water and antibiotics.

PIH strives to eliminate this unnecessary suffering and death by providing free comprehensive health care for children and their families and by working to ensure that children have access to the basic rights – vaccinations, health care, education – key to a healthy, productive life.

Prevention the transmission of HIV to infants 

At least 90 percent of the 2.5 million children living with HIV were infected during childbirth, despite the fact that a simple and highly effective treatment for prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) of HIV became available in 1994. 

In developed countries, the rate of transmission from HIV-positive mothers to infants promptly dropped from 30 percent to just 2 percent. If the same treatment had been rapidly made available throughout the world, ninety percent of the millions of child deaths from HIV since 1994 would have been prevented.

In Haiti, PIH began offering PMTCT and HIV counseling to pregnant mothers in 1995, just one year after it became available in the US. In Haiti, PIH’s HIV Equity Initiative has provided ART free of charge for thousands of children living with HIV since 2000. HIV care for children is fully integrated into other basic health services, also provided at no cost. In 2005, PIH began implementing this model first in Rwanda and later Malawi and Lesotho.

Creating opportunities for orphans 

Roughly 16.6 million children have lost one or both parents to AIDS, and millions more have been affected. These children – 12 million of who live in sub-Saharan Africa – are at increased risk of poverty, homelessness, school dropout, discrimination and loss of life opportunities. These hardships include illness and death.

As the scale of the epidemic overwhelms community support systems and national resources, an increasing number of AIDS orphans are left with only each other for help, struggling to survive as child-headed households. In some devastated areas in Africa, orphaned children head roughly 5 percent of households.

Learn how PIH supports orphans in Rwanda, Malawi and Lesotho.

Creating access to health and education
Breaking the cycle of poverty and disease

In Peru, PIH’s Salud Infantil program serves children in the deeply impoverished communities of Carabayllo in northern Lima. The Child Health program brings doctors to clinics in poor neighborhoods, connecting them with children who would not otherwise have access to care. Community health workers visit patients in their homes, distributing medicine and food to children who are sick or underweight.

Salud Infantil also runs an after-school program for vulnerable children and youth at its community center in Carabayllo. Innovative programs engage at-risk teenage youth, offering counseling in life skills and a chance to serve their communities as youth health promoters. During the summer, youth health promoters and PIH staff lead art classes, swimming and music lessons, traditional dance workshops, and sports programs for neighborhood children. 

In Haiti, PIH supports 30 primary and secondary schools and provides school assistance – tuition, uniforms, school supplies and books – to roughly 13,000 children affected by HIV and TB. Because Haiti’s school system requires that students wear closed-toe shoes to class, PIH distributed 12,000 pairs of TOMS shoes to local school children in 2010. PIH and the World Food Program provide lunch to 11,000 children each day through our school meal program.

With similar programs connected to nearly all of PIH’s 70 hospitals and clinics, we offer children in the poor communities where we work the same essential rights and services that have virtually eliminated deaths from common childhood ailments in rich countries.

Read about other PIH projects in children’s health and education.