Reducing child mortality
12000 children die every day from easily preventable diseases in Africa – where 90% of children orphaned by AIDS live, roughly 15 million – so the protection of children is one of the primary objectives of AMREF.
Interventions for the protection of fundamental rights for children, primarily the right to life, focus on the prevention and treatment of diseases that affect childhood. These intercessions also include the treatment of nutritional deficiencies and other factors that impact on the daily mortality rate.
Furthermore, Amref operates in environments that are dramatically affected by marginalisation and poverty, where hundreds of thousands of children exist. Orphans and runaways are forced to live on the streets of large African cities in hunger, violence, drugs, exploitation and juvenile prostitution. The right to protection, play, education and a loving home environment are high priority targets for AMREF.
Infant health:
The child is at the centre of attention before, during and after birth.
Amref has established numerous projects for the improvement of children’s health through the creation of infrastructures that promote the training of suitable competences for health workers, for the diagnosis, therapy and monitoring of common diseases among children in Africa. For example, diarrhea, and respiratory diseases.
Simultaneously, the vaccination programme carried out by Amref impacts substantially on the prevention of infant mortality.
Child nutrition:
In all of the programmes that Amref dedicates to children, particular attention is paid to nutrition. Nutrition is fundamental for guaranteeing appropriate child development during the most critical period of a child’s development, in particular breast feeding and early infancy.
Formal and informal Education:
Amref holds education as being one of the most fundamental rights for children and for this reason provides initiatives that intervene both formally and informally; especially in Africa where access to education is often denied due to a lack of structures and by extreme poverty in which most children live, making it difficult, if not impossible, for children to attend.
These projects include the creation of scholastic infrastructures and the improvement of existing structures.
In the area of informal education, ANMREF provides a number of projects for street children, alongside medical assistance and dietary needs. Furthermore, Amref uses important educational tools, for example art therapy, for the recovery and social reintegration of poor and marginalized children and teenagers.
