Egypt's child healthcare lessons
A 68 percent improvement in child mortality rates places Egypt second only to the Czech Republic in making progress caring for mothers and infants, a UN study shows.
from the May 8, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
The turnaround began in 1992 with Egypt's first survey of maternal mortality. The government joined with the US Agency for International Development and USAID contractor John Snow to start a project focusing on women and children's health in Upper Egypt.
In 1994, momentum to reduce the health risks for mothers and children grew. Egypt hosted the International Conference on Population and Development. That helped reinforce the campaign to lower fertility rates and improve the health of mothers and children through education and improvements in facilities and treatments. Egyptian officials came out of the 1994 conference "saying, 'we are going to do something.' [Egypt's President Hosni] Mubarak was going to make bringing down the population [growth rate] one of his personal goals," says Patrick Crump, the country director here for Save the Children, an international aid group that runs mother and child healthcare programs. Mr. Crump notes that the proliferation of televisions in Egypt since the 1990s has also been a boon to getting public service health messages out to even the remotest of areas.
The joint Egyptian Health Ministry and USAID project in Upper Egypt focused on educating women about taking care of their health when they are pregnant, by going to see a doctor during pregnancy, and having a trained medical professional with them during delivery. It also focused on improving training of doctors and nurses in basic clinical protocols as well as in prenatal and postnatal care. Save the Children, which issued a report Tuesday on worldwide infant and maternal health using previously released data from the UN and other sources, began a project in 2003 in 30 villages in Upper Egypt in pre- and postnatal care, facility improvements, as well as training local women who then give courses in their areas to other women, in Minya in particular.
Contraceptive use in Egypt has risen by about 1.5 percent a year since 1990, reaching 60 percent of the population in 2003, according to the UN World Contraceptive Use reports for 2003 and 2005. Many Egyptians say it is against Islam to use contraceptives because children are considered blessings given by God. But Crump says that spacing out births for the health of the mother has gained traction as some religious leaders promote passages in the Koran that support the idea.
As horse-drawn carts whiz past on the dirt road through the market and merchants hock cheap children's clothing and glazed sweets, Desoki Abdel Aziz peers through the slit between her black head scarf and the black niqab veil that covers her face.
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