A UNICEF official spoke about a children’s health initiative at [UNICEF-Georgetown’s seventh International Development Dinner](https://studentorgs.georgetown.edu/unicef/?Action=ViewPage&ID=46032) on Friday in Copley Formal Lounge.
Cynthia McCaffrey, senior vice president and chief program officer of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, discussed Believe in Zero – UNICEF’s campaign to prevent the deaths of children from preventable causes.
The dinner, the last event during UNICEF-Georgetown’s International Development Conference, brought together a range of experts from different fields to speak with interested participants at each table.
With Believe in Zero, UNICEF aims to bring about a day in which zero children die from preventable causes.
“Why shouldn’t these [deaths] be zero? We are not waiting for an invention; we are not waiting for someone to discover something. We just need clean water, vaccines, medicines and bed nets – so these are things we can do,” McCaffrey said.
According to McCaffrey, 24,000 children die each day from preventable causes like malaria and “infant deaths,” which generally arise from complications from birth. She also said nearly 8 million children per year die from preventable illnesses before they are five years old. She said there is a clear reason why the number should be zero, besides the clear moral obligation.
“Investing in children works; it’s a good investment,” she said. “Has anyone in this room ever been a child? Was anyone here ever five years old? Did anyone ever invest in you? Made sure you got to the doctor, made sure you got an education, took a risk by giving you a spot in one of the premier education institutions in the world? Investing in kids makes a difference.”
cCaffrey addressed the notion of productivity and the fact that it ultimately costs more in productivity when people are sick and dying than it does to invest in keeping people healthy.
“How do we turn belief into action and do something about it?” McCaffrey asked. She answered with three main points: common framework, success in reaching UNICEF’s goals and collaboration.
“In 2000, the world’s leaders gave us the millennium development goals. So we’ve got goals, targets and deadlines for the first time ever – it’s very exciting, . We have a common framework for people; this country and countries around the world agree that we have to do important things, and most of the goals focus on children,” McCaffrey said.
The goals aim to reduce child mortality under the age of five, to reduce the number of people who do not have access to clean water and basic sanitation and to make sure all children have access to basic education by target dates. The goals are focusing on the youngest because reports show that they are the better long-term investments.
To emphasize the progress of UNICEF’s mission over the years, McCaffrey presented a button displaying the number 25,000, which represents the number of children who were dying each day over a year ago, and threw it aside because that number has gone down in the last year. “That’s 1,000 more kids that will live today; 1,000 more that will live tomorrow, and the day after that. It’s not zero, but it’s moving in the right direction,” she said.
According to McCaffrey, UNICEF often collaborates with the U.S. government and other organizations to create campaigns that target specific illnesses and diseases by providing communities with a vital resource that would make a difference. Iodized salt to prevent mental retardation and mosquito nets to prevent malaria were two examples of successes she said resulted from collaboration between entities.
Although there have been some major strides toward reaching the millennium goals, which governments have set around the world, there are several isolated spots that aid has not yet reached, McCaffrey said.
“[The] biggest challenge we have is reaching down to these people who may be hard to reach, but they are there, they need us and when we get there they run with it – and that is what we have to do,” McCaffrey said.
Nathan Barker (COL ’12), a committee member for organizing the International Development Conference, said that by joining UNICEF he hopes he can improve the situations of marginalized people.
“I joined UNICEF because I am very interested in international development, particularly in developing countries where people are dying from preventable causes,” Barker said.
During the conference, Barker served as moderator for two panels in which he was able to listen to and discuss this line of work by several individuals at the World Bank.
Barker also had the opportunity to sit at the same table as McCaffrey, where he was able to learn about her daily tasks as senior vice president.
Barker said that attending the conference was a career development opportunity.
When McCaffrey began her speech, she started by expressing a valuable lesson she learned from a professor about surviving in Washington.
“Know the facts, because you never know when someone is going to give you the opportunity to impart your knowledge or opinion,” McCaffrey said.
“
