ABSTRACT

ROLE OF WHO IN INFANT & CHILD HEALTH

1. The four main agencies are the World Health Organization (WHO), the
International Labour Organization (ILO), UNESCO and the International Atomic
Energy Authority (IAEA). The ILO and UNESCO were established in 1944; the
WHO was established in 1946 and the IAEA was established in 1957. In total there
are 40 agencies/organizations that are part of the United Nations and each has a
specialist role to play in advancing the standards of living for the worlds
population as a whole. Twenty non-United Nations agencies also work for the
organization. All these organizations cover what are considered to be the main
targets to improve society as a whole.

2. The World Health Organization (WHO):

The WHO was established on 7 April, 1948, which is observed as the World Health
Day. The headquarter of the WHO is in Geneva.
The Emblem of FAO The main purpose of the WHO is to improve the standard of
health all over the world. It believes that good health is a fundamental right of
every human being. The WHO helps countries to strengthen their health systems. It
helps them by giving important medicines and other supplies for medical care. It
also undertakes programmes for immunization against major infectious diseases.
The WHO is concerned about proper food supply and nutrition. It helps to provide
safe drinking water and adequate sanitation to everybody. It had organised the
International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade (1981-1990).

3. WHO plays an important role in giving the information on child mortality and
child health, these data are important for the country to know about its future
manpower.
Child health is important because children represent the future, and ensuring their
healthy growth and development ought to be a prime concern of all societies.
Newborns are particularly vulnerable and children are vulnerable to malnutrition
and infectious diseases, many of which can be effectively prevented or treated. As
quoted by WHO.

WHO has a programmer dedicated to Maternal, newborn, child and adolescent

health. Under this programmer WHO collects data and publishes it and also
monitors and research on it. The topics mainly covered under this are Newborn
health, Maternal health, Child health, and adolescent health.
Here are some facts derived from the WHO data for child health as follows:-
1. Causes of death -83%of deaths in children under age five are caused by
infectious, neonatal or nutritional conditions
2. Preventing under-five deaths 58%of children with suspected pneumonia are
taken for treatment to an appropriate care provider

WHO within association of United Nations has created Child Rights through
United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). The CRC
reflects the international consensus on standards for ensuring the overall well-
being of all children and young people up to the age of 18 years has in
collaboration with United Nations has created Child Rights through .
The CRC is the normative and legal framework for WHOs work across the broad
spectrum of child and adolescent health and development.

Through such programmer, data collection and the child rights creation WHO
achieves to help the countries fight infant mortality and maintain healthy
population. WHO had recently did a survey in which they found every day;
millions of parents seek health care for their sick children, taking them to hospitals,
health centers.

But many sick children are not properly assessed and treated by these health care
providers, and that their parents are poorly advised. These factors make providing
quality care to sick children a serious challenge. WHO and UNICEF have
addressed this challenge by developing a strategy called the Integrated
Management of Childhood Illness (IMCI).

What is IMCI?
IMCI is an integrated approach to child health that focuses on the well-being of the
whole child. IMCI aims to reduce death, illness and disability, and to promote
improved growth and development among children under five years of age. IMCI
includes both preventive and curative elements that are implemented by families
and communities as well as by health facilities.
The strategy includes three main components:
Improving case management skills of health-care staff
Improving overall health systems
Improving family and community health practices.
This has helped various developing courtiers and funded them as their economic
conditions of these countries cannot afford best of the best medical services.

WHO has created a fact file on child health here some of the facts as follows:-
1. Pneumonia is the largest single cause of death in children under five years of age
2. Every minute a child dies from malaria
3. A child's risk of dying is highest in the first month of life
4. Diarrhoeal diseases are a leading cause of sickness and death among children in
developing countries

4. INDIA AND WHO

WHO has a regional office in New Delhi in India. India is part of The Partnership
for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health (PMNCH) is a multi-constituency
partnership hosted by the World Health Organization. The government of India is
the member of the PMNCH Board.

The child mortality rate in India is higher than South- East Asian countries.
However in 2015 the mortality rate was the lowest compared with previous years
but failed to achieve Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 4 -which aims to
reduce Under-Five Mortality (U5MR) by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015-
unless the related socio-economic; maternal and demographic; and environmental
determinants are urgently addressed.

5. Global Plan of Action for Children's Health and the

Environment
Each year around three million children under the age of five die due to
environment-related diseases.
Acute respiratory infections annually kill an estimated 1.6 million children under
the age of five. As much as 60 percent of acute respiratory infections worldwide
are related to environmental conditions.

Diarrhoeal diseases claim the lives of nearly 1.5 million children every year.
Eighty to 90 percent of these diarrhoea cases are related to environmental
conditions, in particular, contaminated water and inadequate sanitation.
Nearly 1 million children under the age of five died of malaria in 2008. Up to 90
percent of malaria cases are attributed to environmental factors.
6. Working together: WHO collaborating centers for
childrens environmental health
About three million children still die every year from environmentally-related
causes, mostly in developing countries. These factors, which are largely
preventable, also account for about one third of the global burden of disease in
children. Children are particularly vulnerable to environmental impacts on health
because of social, economic, and physiological factors. Coordinated actions are
required to raise awareness and reduce risk and vulnerability.

To this end, the Childrens Environmental Health programme is working closely

with 10 WHO collaborating centers (CCs) - institutions whose remits include
children's environmental health - at the global, regional, and national levels, to
reduce the morbidity and mortality of children by increasing awareness and action
to prevent harmful exposures during early life.

Areas of work for the collaborating institutions, based on the Global Plan of Action
for Children's Health and the Environment, include:
Developing interventions aimed at reducing exposure and preventing or decreasing
the burden of disease;
Capacity building;
Communication and awareness rising;
Setting research agendas aimed at building evidence;

This network of CCs is being hosted by the National Institute of Environmental

Health Sciences (NIEHS), a WHO Collaborating Centre for Environmental Health
Sciences. Please visit the web sites, below, for further information:

7. Nutrition and health in women, children, and

adolescent girls
Every year the lives of around 50 million children are put at risk because they are
dangerously thin from acute under nutrition, while the long term health is
threatened because they are overweight. Two billion people suffer from vitamin
and mineral deficiencies, but overweight and obesity are key contributors to the
non-communicable diseases that account for almost two thirds (63%) of adult
deaths globally.

Methods
This paper highlights nutrition related priority actions to improve the health of
women, children, and adolescent girls. It is based on existing policy guidance
issued by the World Health Assembly in the form of resolutions or targets;
guidelines from the World Health Organization; or the outcome documents of the
Second International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2).

Conclusion
Investment in nutrition is crucial to future efforts to improve the health of women,
children, and adolescents is possible through WHO programmer.
The global commitments to action are in place, backed by targets to measure
progress. All contributors, across government and society, must come together to
turn these commitments into action which is possible formation and functioning of
WHO as an agency.

NOTES

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