Children’s Emergency Fund
Every year, millions of people are affected by natural or man-made disasters such as earthquakes, floods, landslides, conflicts and wars. Regardless of the type of emergency, children are always the most affected. Save the Children is there to help them: Thanks to their Children’s Emergency Fund, Save the Children is able to launch an initial operation within 48 hours after the onset of the crisis. In this way, lives can be saved and the distress of the affected children and their families can be relieved.
Project Initiator:
Save the Children
Funding Area/s:
Picture Credits:
© Save the Children – Alim, 43, and her 8-month-old Abei (Turkana, Kenya)
Abei lives with his mother Alim, 43, and his five siblings in a remote village in Turkana, Kenya. His father has relocated to another town in search of a better job, while the family makes a living by selling charcoal and small-scale farming along the Turkwel riverbank. Of his five siblings, only one is attending school.
Abei is a bubbly and jovial little boy who was recently diagnosed with pneumonia. A community health volunteer, Epete, usually referred to by community members as a «village doctor, » treated Abei and put him on Amoxycillin (DT). Abei has now made a full recovery, bringing much delight to his mother.
«I wish for my kids to have good health», says Alim. «I might not know what they desire to become in the future, but I wish some of them would become doctors, and others would work in the county government».
Save the Children in partnership with the Ministry of Health has been providing lifesaving interventions to young children that include conducting integrated health and nutrition outreach clinics in far to reach areas, strengthening capacity of health care workers to treat various illnesses, training of community health volunteers to assess, classify and treat childhood diseases like diarrhoea, malaria and refer pneumonia and other complicated diseases.
Save the Children has trained and deployed community health volunteers to screen for pneumonia using a simplified bead necklace innovation and treat mild cases with Amoxycillin (DT). The ongoing program began in May 2022 in Turkana, where 1,306 children have been screened using Family MUAC. Out of the total children screened, at least 434 children were found to have fast breathing, a sign of pneumonia. Community health volunteers treated 277 children using Amoxycillin (DT).