As 2013 begins, it’s a good time to look back on the year gone by. For UNICEF, 2012 was filled with immense challenges—all of which we met head-on. But this year was also one in which great strides were made for child survival. Watch the Year in Review video to see some of the highlights of UNICEF’s work in 2012.
The world has seen “stunning” gains in child survival and health, according to The New York Times’ Tina Rosenberg in a recent column citing UNICEF’s work. Her article shares heartening results from a new study called the Global Burden of Disease report. Among them: over the past 20 years, the mortality rate for children under five has dropped worldwide, in some countries by as much as 70 percent.
December 4, 2012, was a day that changed the lives of more than 250,000 Filipino children living in the worst affected areas of the southern Philippines. Super Typhoon Bhopa made landfall in the early hours of the morning, in a region that is rarely visited by typhoons. Here is the story of one young girl who lived through the storm.
As we’ve been posting on our FieldNotes blog, the typhoon that hit the Philippines on December 4 was truly devastating. We recently received a situation report from the UNICEF office in the Philippines, and wanted to share with you some updates.
On the morning of December 4, Super Typhoon Bopha slammed into the southeastern coast of Mindanao in the Philippines. With winds of over 108 mph and heavy, intense rainfall, the storm completely destroyed homes and crops in the hardest-hit areas. So far, there have been 418 confirmed deaths, and 383 persons are still missing. More than 56,000 people were evacuated. UNICEF has been on the ground in the Philippines since 1948 and immediately began assisting families and children in need.
Tonight at 10:00 PM ET, Lawrence O’Donnell of MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell will make a plea to viewers: Give kids in Malawi brighter futures by purchasing them school desks. This will be the third year that Lawrence has made this overture. In three years’ time, “K.I.N.D.: Kids in Need of Desks” has resulted in more than $4 million dollars raised for desks in child friendly schools in Malawi, a country where only one in five children have access to ordinary school furniture.
Thirty years ago, only one out of five children were immunized against killer diseases like measles and polio. Throughout the developing world, millions of children were dying of illnesses that had all but disappeared in the world’s wealthier countries. Since then, a near miracle has taken place. Now, four out of five children are protected by vaccines. Polio is on the verge of elimination. Measles and tetanus deaths have been reduced dramatically. This miracle did not happen by itself.
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