Decreasing the Burden of Childhood Disease - Western Cape ...

Overview
Background: The situation
of children in South Africa
South Africa has taken major steps towards improving the situation of its
children since the dawn of democracy 13 years ago. These include the
ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in
1995; the unconditional inclusion of basic socio-economic rights for
children in the Constitution in the following year; and, more recently, the
adoption of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Mothers and
children have access to free health care in the public sector and access to
child care grants has improved. Moreover, we are experiencing almost
unprecedented economic growth.
Yet, South Africa’s children are getting sicker rather than healthier. The
under-5 mortality rate (U5MR) has increased 60 per 1,000 live births in
1990 to 66 in 2003 1 . (The UNICEF figure for U-5MR is lower than that of
the Actuarial Society of South Africa, which gives a figure of 100 for U5MR
in 2002.) We are one of the few countries in the world where under-5
mortality is increasing rather than decreasing (along with some other
Sub-Saharan African countries: Botswana, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Kenya,
and Cote d'Ivoire). Our performance in child survival is poor in comparison
with other low- and middle-income countries, where U5MR is falling
progressively 2 .
Our prospects for reaching our MDG goals in child health seem bleak,
notwithstanding a highly optimistic progress report from the Southern
African Regional Poverty Network. i MDG 4 commits us to reduce by twothirds,
between 1990 and 2015, the under-5 mortality rate. Since the
U5MR in 1990 was 60, our target in terms of MDG 4 is to achieve a figure
of 20.
1 UNICEF, State of the World’s Children, 2005, UNICEF, New York, Statistical Tables,
pp 142-5.
2 UNICEF. The State of the World's Children 2005.
3