News Snap

Race for Survival

On October 12, 2012, young campaigners from Bangladesh joined 20,000 children coming from 40 countries for Save the Children's Race for Survival, a global marathon length relay race to raise awareness about preventable children health problems which kill thousands of children everyday. The children competed with the aim to beat the world record marathon (42.195km) time of 2 hours 3 minutes and 38 seconds set by Patrick Makau.

Courtesy:Save the Children's

The campaigners from Bangladesh raised their voice on the need of ensuring health workers within the reach of every child, providing them with vaccine and raise awareness about nutritious foods. It was stated that ,among the children of Bangladesh, 41% are stunted and 36% are underweight. Children who are under the age of five die every year at an alarming rate due to pneumonia and diarrhoea which are completely curable. Only 37% of the suspected pneumonia cases have access to proper treatment. Around 19% of children with diarrhoea are still deprived of appropriate oral re-hydration therapy. Michael Foley, Director of Health and Nutrition at Save the Children, emphasised on the need for children to survive the common treatable illnesses like pneumonia and diarrhoea, not suffer from chronic malnutrition and have access to basic healthcare.

When children from all over the world unite to raise awareness of child survival, world leaders ought to take notice and set targets to reduce malnutrition. Much has been done to reduce child mortality rate in developing countries like Bangladesh in the last ten years. But there is still a long way to go to achieve the Millennium Development Goal on child survival by the year of 2015.