Fieldnotes: Blogging on UNICEF's child survival work in the field

Adam Fifield is on staff at the U.S. Fund for UNICEF. He'll be doing weekly round-ups of news coverage of interest. This is his first post.

Greetings news buffs! For those of you who want to keep track of UNICEF’s news footprint, I will be posting regular reviews of items from various sources. With an organization as vast and diverse as UNICEF, I obviously can’t list everything, but I will try to compile a mix of reports that is interesting and informative. I may also throw in a small dose of commentary or a ‘Background note’ that will offer added context, history or other info.

© UNICEF/HQ94-0481/Press
James Grant with an unaccompanied child in Rwanda in 1994.

In a column last week urging American presidential candidates to embrace humanitarian issues, The New York Times’ Nicholas D. Kristof mentioned UNICEF and the recent news that the number of young children dying each year from preventable diseases has dropped below 10 million for the first time on record. Kristof lauded the powerful legacy of the late James P. Grant, UNICEF’s executive director from 1980 to 1995.

Background note: To fight what he called a “silent global emergency”—millions of children perishing from preventable diseases—Jim Grant launched the “child survival and development revolution” in 1983. This campaign, which coordinated local, national and international initiatives to provide cost-effective interventions such as immunizations and oral rehydration therapy, was estimated to have saved the lives of 12 million children by the late 1980s.

Are you familiar with James P. Grant? What other humanitarian heroes do you admire?