Child Health

© PAW KHU

Local health workers measuring a child's upper arm circumference: One-third of all children in Burma are malnourished.

A capsule of Vitamin A reduces blindness and a child’s chance of death by one-third. Deworming medication just twice a year combats malnutrition and improves a child’s cognitive capacities. Like immunizations, these are simple, effective and low cost interventions that greatly improve family and community health.

CPI facilitates wide-reaching prevention programs for displaced villagers, including training and resources for schoolteachers and local health workers to provide Vitamin A and deworming for 35,000 children 12 and under twice a year, and for health workers to administer essential immunizations against polio, TB, diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, measles, mumps and rubella to more than 6,000 children under age 14 annually.

One-third of all children in Burma are malnourished and the problem is even more acute among the vulnerable displaced populations in eastern Burma. Our health branch, the Global Health Access Program, helped our local partners design and implement a community-led child nutrition program that has screened thousands of children, and provides family education and intensive treatment for hundreds with moderate and severe malnutrition.

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