5th Birthday Campaign Seeks to Reduce Child Deaths

The U.S. Agency for International Development and numerous partners, including InterAction member organizations, launched the “Every Child Deserves a 5th Birthday” campaign on Monday. The campaign’s goal is to raise awareness to help children worldwide live to celebrate their fifth birthday. The campaign also encourages people to submit photos from their fifth birthdays and use social media to spread the word about the campaign.

USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah announced the campaign at the Kaiser Family Foundation, a partner in the effort. The campaign includes a high-level forum in June:  The Child Survival: Call to Action.  At the Washington D.C. forum, the governments of the United States, India and Ethiopia, working alongside UNICEF, will seek to mobilize the global community to help end preventable child deaths.

“At the current annual rate of decline of 2.6 percent, the gap in child death between rich and poor countries would persist until nearly the end of this century. But we are capable of much more. By working closely with countries and continuing our results-oriented investments in global health, we can bring the rate of child mortality in poor countries to the same level it is in rich countries,” Dr. Shah wrote in an opinion article on The Huffington Post.

InterAction members and partners that support the campaign,  include 1,000 Days, the Aga Khan Foundation U.S.A., Bread for the World, CARE, Catholic Relief Services, Food for the Hungry, Management Sciences for Health, ONE, PATH, Save the Children, and World Vision.

For more information, watch the campaign’s video on YouTube and visit http://5thbday.usaid.gov. Follow the conversation on Twitter using the hashtag #5BDay.