Newborn, Child, and Mother Survival Act of 2009

Every year, more than 9 million children under age five die from preventable and treatable diseases.

• More than 25,000 children die every day. Pneumonia, diarrhea and complications during childbirth are leading causes of death. Malnutrition is an underlying contributor in over half of these deaths.
• Nearly 4 million newborns die in the first 4 weeks of life (40 percent of under-5 deaths).
  90 percent of under-5 deaths occur in only 42 developing countries.

Proven, cost-effective interventions can save the lives of millions of children per year.

• Immunization interventions still do not reach 30 million children, despite success in immunizations in reducing polio, tetanus, and measles. Measles and tetanus still kill more than 1 million children under-5 each year.
• Vitamin A supplementation costs only $0.02 cents for each capsule and given 2-3 times a year will prevent blindness and death. Although vitamin A supplementation saved an estimated 2.3 million lives between 1999 and 2004, only half of young children in poor countries receive these treatments.  Between 250,000 and 500,000 children become blind every year, with 70 percent of them dying within 12 months.
• Oral rehydration therapy (ORT) helped reduce diarrhea deaths by half saves an estimated 1 million lives annually, yet more than 2 million children still die from diarrhea-related causes each year.
  Essential newborn care, including immunizing mothers against tetanus, ensuring clean delivery practices in a hygienic birthing environment, drying and wrapping the baby immediately after birth, providing necessary warmth, promoting immediate and continued breastfeeding, immunization and treating infections with antibiotics could save the lives of 3 million newborns annually.
• Improved sanitation and access to clean drinking water can reduce childhood infections and diarrhea. Over 40 percent of the world's population does not have access to basic sanitation, and more than one billion people use unsafe sources of drinking water.

United States leadership saves lives.

• The significant commitment of the United States to reducing child mortality in the developing world contributed to a 50 percent reduction in the mortality of children under the age of 5 between 1960 and 1990.
• Despite this success, funding for maternal and child health programs has declined 20 percent in real terms since 1997.

To restore United States leadership in improving the health of mothers, newborn and children, the Act would:

• Commit to proven, low-cost, highly effective techniques for life-saving interventions that will save the lives of newborns, children, and their mothers.
• Develop an integrated U.S. strategy for reducing child and maternal mortality.
• Establish a Newborn, Child, and Maternal Health Task Force to maximize U.S. ability to leverage investments to reduce child and maternal mortality.
• Authorize funding for child survival and maternal health programs to help save the lives of hundreds of thousands of newborns, children, and mothers, in 60 poor countries.