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New WHO chief means child health benefit, UNICEF says

"It is hard to exaggerate our elation at Dr. Brundtland's ascension to the helm of WHO," Ms. Bellamy said of Brundtland's confirmation at the World Health Assembly in Geneva. "Our two agencies have been working closely together on behalf of children for half a century -- and throughout that time, WHO has been one of UNICEF's closest and most valued partners in the entire UN family. I cannot think of a more fitting way to begin the next 50 years."

Ms. Bellamy said Brundtland's pledge to open a new front in the global fight against malaria and tobacco use is an especially happy convergence of interests, since both issues are also high among UNICEF's concerns in preventive health.

"A young child dies of malaria every 30 seconds," Ms. Bellamy said, "and some 300 million of today's teenagers will eventually die of tobacco-related illness, a third of them in developing countries. We have our work cut out for us."

UNICEF's work in health is guided by the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which obligates governments to promote the health and good nutrition of infants, children and women; to protect children from drugs and exploitation, and to ensure that they have access to health education.

"Malaria kills more than a million under-five children every year, mostly in Africa," Ms. Bellamy said. "Its devastating resurgence, more than 35 years after WHO and UNICEF resolved to work jointly to eradicate it, shows how much ground we have to make up."

Besides killing children outright, the Executive Director noted, malaria also has profound consequences for child health and development. The onset of the disease is frequently a trigger for malnutrition among children and pregnant women. Malnutrition is implicated in the deaths of seven million of the 12 million children who die of preventable causes each year -- and has crippling consequences for children.

Moreover, as UNICEF points out in its survey on global nutrition, reported in The State of the World's Children 1998, pregnant women are more susceptible to malaria -- and children born to mothers suffering from malaria run a greater chance of being born anaemic and underweight.

"We know that the disease is increasingly resistant to drug treatment and that development of a malaria vaccine is progressing very slowly," Ms. Bellamy said. "That is why UNICEF's work on malaria is focused chiefly on community-based prevention, including the use of insecticide-impregnated bednets, which have been shown to cut child deaths significantly."

She said UNICEF intends to work intensively with WHO to make it economically and logistically possible to provide impregnated bednets to 20 per cent of under-five children in high-risk areas by the year 2000; to 50 per cent by 2005 -- and to provide universal access by 2010.

She said UNICEF also applauds Brundtland's vow to make the fight against tobacco a top policy priority, especially in light of the global tobacco industry's increasing focus on the sale and promotion of tobacco products to young people and women in the developing world.

"If WHO's projections on tobacco deaths over the next 30 years hold true, the developing countries, which are already facing a huge increase in deaths from HIV/AIDS, will be hit with a double-whammy," she said.

Yearly tobacco deaths are approaching 4 million, a figure that is projected to rise to 10 million by the year 2030, with 70 per cent of the deaths occurring in developing countries. Tobacco is one of the only two major causes of premature death that are increasing substantially worldwide – the other is HIV/AIDS.

"The calculated expansion of the global tobacco market poses a direct challenge to UNICEF's day-to-day efforts to save children from dying of preventable causes," Ms. Bellamy said. "There is no cause of death more preventable than that caused by tobacco."

Last year, environment ministers representing the Group of 7 leading industrial nations and the Russian Federation affirmed that tobacco smoke poses a public health risk to young children that can weaken lung capacity and cause respiratory disorders.

"UNICEF has called repeatedly for a global strategy that treats tobacco commensurate with the harm it causes, beginning with worldwide restrictions on the sale and promotion of tobacco products, especially to children and young people in developing countries," Ms. Bellamy said. "We look forward to working with WHO to ensure that children get the protection they need."

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