Foreword
Every year, nearly 11 million children die from preventable causes before reaching their fifth birthday, many of them during the first year of life. Millions more survive only to face diminished lives, unable to develop to their full potential.
This terrible toll in human suffering and forgone prosperity can be vastly reduced. Three fourths of all child visits to health facilities for medical care and 7 out of 10 childhood deaths result from just five causes: pneumonia, diarrhoea, measles, malaria and malnutrition. The knowledge and capacity to prevent and treat all five causes exist.
Facts for Life aims to make life-saving knowledge easily available to everyone. It presents the most important facts that people have a right to know to prevent child deaths and diseases, and to protect women during pregnancy and childbirth. Its messages are simple, and people in every corner of the world can act on them.
Published by UNICEF, WHO, UNESCO, UNFPA, UNDP, UNAIDS, WFP and the World Bank, Facts for Life can save many lives – if its messages reach their intended audience. We urge all communicators – health workers, the media, government officials, non-governmental organizations, teachers, religious leaders, employers, trade unions, women's groups, community organizations and others – to join in a common cause to protect all children.
- Carol Bellamy
- Executive Director
United Nations Children's Fund
- Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland
- Director-General
World Health Organization
- Koichiro Matsuura
- Director-General
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
- Thoraya Ahmed Obaid
- Executive Director
United Nations Population Fund
- Mark Malloch Brown
- Administrator
United Nations Development Programme
- Dr. Peter Piot
- Executive Director
Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS
- Catherine Bertini
- Executive Director
World Food Programme
- James D. Wolfensohn
- President
The World Bank
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