Health Facts

Health Facts

Poverty affects children in a variety of ways, but one of the most dangerous symptoms of poverty is how it attacks their health. Learn the facts about health for children around the world and get a glimpse of just how devastating poverty can be. These health facts will give you a clear picture of one way that poverty is stealing the hope and even lives of children in need.

Poverty affects a child’s health in many ways. Learn the facts about health and issues like malnutrition, costly or unavailable immunizations, easily communicable diseases and many other symptoms of poverty. Once you understand just how deadly child poverty can be, you’ll begin to understand why we feel so passionately about fighting it.

The statistics and health facts like those relating to easily preventable diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria are among the most heart wrenching because their solution is so obvious. Compassion is helping stop the spread of preventable disease in children around the world through simple things like immunizations and bed nets.

The facts about health are clear: one of the most effective ways to stop poverty from stealing the lives of children is to keep them healthy. Sign up today to sponsor a child and help provide them a healthy, disease-free life.

Health Facts
Health Facts Get the facts about the health challenges that impoverished children and their families are facing.
  • Malaria kills approximately 1 million children per year, many of them under age 5 and most of them in sub-Saharan Africa.
  • In developing countries, one in every six infants is not immunized against tuberculosis.
  • While the number of deaths due to measles fell dramatically between 2000 and 2007, one in every four children in developing countries is not immunized against measles.
  • Only 55 percent of the world's infants are fully immunized against hepatitis B.
  • Only 69 percent of newborns are protected against tetanus.
  • Malaria, together with HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis, is one of the major public health challenges undermining development in the poorest countries in the world.
  • There are 1.8 million diarrheal-related deaths per year among young children.
  • Children under age 5 account for less than 10 percent of the world's population, but suffer from 40 percent of the diseases attributed to environmental factors.
  • Acute respiratory infections annually kill an estimated 2 million children under the age of 5.
  • About 1.8 million people, most of whom are children, die annually of food-borne diseases.
  • Approximately 37 percent of deaths among children under 5 — 9.7 million worldwide in 2006 — occur in the first month of life.

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