Child Deaths

Around the world, there are some 26,500 children die every day. That is equivalent to: 1 child dying every 3 seconds, 18 children dying every minute, or a 2004 Asian Tsunami occurring every week. The silent killers are poverty, hunger, easily preventable diseases and illnesses, and other related causes. In spite of the scale of this daily/ongoing catastrophe, it rarely manages to achieve, much less sustain, prime-time, headline coverage. But why? It seems as if people still do not notice. It's rare, in the mainstream media is any thought that wealthy countries may be part of the problem too. The effects of international policies, the current form of globalization, and the influence the wealthy countries have on these processes is rarely looked at. Instead, promises and pledges from the wealthy, powerful countries, and the corruption of the poorer ones, who receive apparently abundant goodwill, make the headlines. Accountability of the recipient countries is often mentioned when these issues touch the mainstream. Accountability of the roles that international institutions such as the World Bank and IMF, and their funders (the wealthy and powerful countries), rarely does. The risk is that citizens of these countries get a false sense of hope creating the misleading impression that appropriate action is taken in their names. We cannot save the world, but there are things that could be done to make poverty a lesser problem. Wouldn't it be much nicer to see that a child is dying later than just every three seconds? To think that every breath we take, a child is losing one. It's a pitiful world, and to think of a child dying every three seconds is overbearing.