Helping Children Survive and Thrive
Partners in Health ensures that children in Haiti have medical access.
Your clicks save lives. Learn how!
The Child Health Site is proud to team up with Partners In Health to reach out to the world's children. Their proven programs to help children in need benefit from your actions at The Child Health Site. Your clicks currently fund two simple, effective, life-saving therapies for children: vitamin A and oral rehydration therapy.
Partners In Health: Helping in Haiti
Partners In Health has been working in Haiti since 1987 to reach every child with preventive health care, lifesaving treatment, and hope for the future. They provide comprehensive health care for children and their families, and work to ensure that children have access to basic rights and needs: education, health care, an adequate standard of living, and freedom from economic exploitation and other abuse. Key to their success, and to the PIH model of care pioneered in Haiti, has been the training and hiring of thousands of community health workers.
One quarter of patients seen at PIH's mobile clinics are children under 10.
After the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti, PIH established mobile clinics that have reached over 100,000 patients, mostly displaced survivors of the disaster. During the month of May alone, these clinics reached 36,204 patients - one quarter of which were children under the age of ten. Over 1,000 patients were suffering from acute diarrhea, and nearly 700 malnourished children were enrolled in a nutrition program.
PIH also maintains well-established programs that include vaccination and treatment for childhood diseases, feeding malnourished children, providing clean water sources to prevent waterborne disease, and ensuring that children have access to an education. This work continues today as PIH works to ensure the long-term health and safety of these young lives.
Focusing on Great Need
In July of 2010, The Child Health Site chose to refocus its efforts to reach the greatest number of children in need. Your clicks at The Child Health Site will focus on providing two simple yet vital therapies to children - vitamin A and oral rehydration therapy - through Partners In Health.
When you click, you protect and nourish a child's eyes and immune system, and protect against death due to diarrhea and dehydration.
For years, clicks from The Child Health Site also funded prosthetics for children through the Prosthetics Outreach Program. You can still support their good work fighting disability due to clubfoot and providing prosthetics and more to patients in need.
Also since 2002, clicks funded testing kits that would determine if an expectant mother was HIV-positive, so that she could receive drug treatment to prevent transmitting HIV to her newborn during birth. Today, this need is covered by other grant efforts, which allow us to focus your daily click onto other, more pressing healthcare needs for children.
Below is more information on Child Health Site projects prior to July of 2010.
Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation
Helen Keller International
Mercy Corps
Prosthetics Outreach Foundation
Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation
www.pedaids.org
Founded in 1988, the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation has a three-star Charity Navigator rating and is dedicated to preventing pediatric HIV infection and eradicating pediatric AIDS through research, advocacy, and prevention and treatment programs. With some 2.3 million children under the age of 15 living with HIV, their work is desperately needed.1
"Every child deserves a lifetime."
—Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation
In 2000, the Foundation established the Call to Action Project to bring simplified regimens for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV to families in developing countries. This program represents a cornerstone of the FoundationÂs International Family AIDS Initiatives. As of January of 2007, the Foundation is working in 17 countries and has reached more than 3.2 million women with access to services to prevent transmission of HIV from mothers to babies. More than 2.5 million women have been tested for HIV through their programs.
Helen Keller International
www.hki.org
Founded in 1915, Helen Keller International is among the oldest international nonprofit organizations devoted to fighting and treating preventable blindness and malnutrition. HKI has programs in 22 countries around the world. The goal of all HKI programs is to reduce suffering of those without access to needed health or vision care and, ultimately, to help lift people from poverty.
Helen Keller International is committed to preventing and treating primary causes of blindness in children through its proven programs, which include providing vitamin A supplements and facilitating surgeries to reverse trachoma and cataract. According to HKI:
- Every year, between 250,000 and 500,000 children go blind from a lack of vitamin A in their diet, and 70 percent of these children die within one year of losing their sight. It only takes two doses of vitamin A in a year to prevent blindness--at a cost of approximately $1.
- Trachoma is the leading infectious cause of preventable blindness in the world. . It is caused by a bacterium prevalent in poor communities with limited access to adequate sanitation and clean water. A simple surgical procedure to correct trichiasis has a success rate of 80 percent, and can cost as little as $10 per person.
- The number one cause of blindness worldwide, cataracts affect over 18 million people. Cataract surgery that replaces the damaged lens of the eye with a plastic (intraocular) lens is miraculous. In most cases, when the surgeon removes the bandages, the patient can immediately see--often after having suffered with blindness for years.
"Ignorance, poverty, and greed must disappear so that light can prevail in all places."
—Helen Keller
HKI builds local capacity by establishing sustainable programs, and provides scientific and technical assistance and data to governments and international, regional, national and local organizations around the world. HKI has a three-star rating from Charity Navigator .
Mercy Corps
www.mercycorps.com
Since 1979, Mercy Corps has provided $1.3 billion in assistance to people in 100 nations. Supported by headquarters offices in North America, Europe, and Asia, the agency's unified global programs employ 3,400 staff worldwide and reach nearly 14.4 million people in more than 35 countries. Mercy Corps has a four-start rating from Charity Navigator .
Mercy Corps' work to build healthy communities, healthy families, and healthy individuals is at the foundation of its vision for social change. By partnering with village health committees to government ministers, Mercy Corps helps build local infrastructure to improve maternal, newborn, and child health and nutrition, combat infectious diseases including TB and HIV/AIDS, and provide physical and mental health care in emergencies.
"Teaching the next generation and keeping it healthy are essential components for tomorrow's strong, vibrant societies."
—Mercy Corps
Natural disasters can take homes and what little possessions families have. The outbreak of war and threat of violence can drive families from their homes. When the unthinkable happens, Mercy Corps delivers rapid, lifesaving aid to hard-hit communities. Mercy Corps was one of the first agencies to respond to the Indian Ocean tsunami, and rushed to the scene to help victims of IranÂs Bam earthquakes and those devastated by Hurricane Katrina.
The agency is currently involved in programs in Africa, Latin America, the Balkans, the Caucasus, Central, East and South Asia, the Middle East, and North America. Over the last five years, more than 90 percent of Mercy Corps resources were allocated directly to programs that assist those in need. The agency uses funding to provide:
- Emergency relief services that assist people afflicted by conflict or disaster
- Sustainable economic development that integrates agriculture, health, housing and infrastructure, economic development, education and environment, and local management
- Civil society initiatives that promote citizen participation, accountability, conflict management, and the rule of law
Prosthetics Outreach Foundation
www.pofsea.org
An international humanitarian nonprofit organization, the Prosthetics Outreach Foundation was founded in 1989 and is dedicated to restoring mobility and independence to amputees worldwide. Since opening the first prosthetics clinic in Vietnam, POF has responded to calls for prosthetic assistance from the Philippines and Nicaragua, established a prosthetics and orthotics center in Bangladesh, and is beginning a new initiative in Sierra Leone.
"It is truly remarkable how little it takes to change a life."
—Prosthetics Outreach Foundation
The services provided by the Prosthetics Outreach Foundation include:
- Clinical outreach to amputees, especially in hard-to-serve, remote, rural areas
- Orthopedic surgical assistance for amputees and others suffering from orthopedic disabilities
- Local prosthetic and orthotic component manufacturing
- General technical assistance
Over the last 15 years, POF has helped more than 13,000 children and adults to walk again. A few dollars worth of metal and plastic can restore mobility and independence to amputees and others suffering from orthopedic disabilities. Without assistance, these amputees, often from impoverished rural areas, would have little hope of leading a normal life. With the unique help of the Prosthetics Outreach Foundation, amputees can begin to rebuild their lives, transforming a life of dependency on others into a life of increased self-worth and independence.
For more information about children's health issues, visit this page on The Child Health Site:
- 2006 Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic — A UNAIDS 10th Anniversary Special Edition.
