P o w e r a n d
child mortality
Who
are
thebaby killers
What’s child mortality?
1
Caused by chance?
2
3 Caused by government?
4 Caused by global governance?
What is
child
mortality
U5MR
Probability of
dying
between
birth and
five years of
age,
per
1,000
live
births
Child survival is one of the most
sensitive indicators of human
welfare, the comparative health of
nations and the effectiveness of
public policy
UNDP 2005: 27
Some
numbers…
1 in
143
Mortality
rate in
wealthier
nations
1 in 10
Mortality rate in
low income
countries
children under the age of five died, 2011
daily child
mortality rate
2011
% of deaths
in first 28
days of life.
Number who could have been saved
4.4 million
43
19,000
6.9 million
India,
Nigeria,
Democratic
Republic of
the Congo,
Pakistan
and China.
%
India
%
+
Nigeria
Proximate causes of
child deaths
Deaths from
malaria
800
thousand
malaria
African child deaths from
1
perminute
13
million
deaths from
infectious diseases
Deaths from
measles
1MIL L ION
everyyear
DEATHS FROM MEASLES-RELATED
COMPLICATIONS PER DAY
452
2011
Human
1
42,007
Soldier and Civilians
158,000
Measles
800,000
Malaria
1,855,000
Diarrhoea
13,012,444
Infectious
Diseases
1 pneumonia
18%
2 preterm complications
14%
3 diarrhoea 11%
4 complications during birth
9%
5 malaria
7%
underlying
factor
in about
ONE-THIRD
of
ALL
CHILD
DEATHS
Malnutrition
water-born
disease
kills 5,000
per day
www.sanitation-is-dignity.org/why_sanitation
1.8
million
lives
a
year
no single measure would do
more to reduce disease and
save lives in the developing
world than clean water and
sanitation provision
Annan 2000: 61.
760,000Child deaths
from diarrhoea
annually
Walker et al (2011):
$3.24
cost per person to
reduce by
92%
global
diarrhoea
deaths
Is it
chance
Bad luck
FAMINE
Suggests no human causation
child mortality may be
act of GOD
agency
Absolves us all of responsibility and
Is it
government
The birth of a child is a
Handwerker, W. Penn (1990) ‘Politics and Reproduction: A
Window on Social Change’, In: Births and power, ed.
Handwerker, W. Penn, Westview: San Francisco, 1-38
POLITICAL EVENT
Western model
social contract
responsibility
Similar
economies often fried
limited capacity for needs
assessment
underdeveloped infrastructure for
distribution
Europeans didn’t
build railways
so
africans
could
visittheir friends
NGOS,
INGOs
Helped
by aid
But hampered by
big
pharma
corruption
by
local to global
And by dictatorship
and
dictatorships
Is it
global
governance
What’s
global
governance
Response to
globalization
institutionalised management of
international change and
continuity
Thousands of subnational,
national and supranational
bodies, civil society
technologies
neutral and technocratic, non-ideological
a system of rules that –
given the absence of
a central power – is
carried out by a
diversity of actors
on different levels
Beyer 2008
No central power
privatization
If MARKETS ‘solve’
child mortality
how will poor
people
pay?
 Socially basic rights are the rights that
serve as necessary conditions for the
enjoyment of other rights.
 E.g., the rights protecting access to basic
needs to subsistence (food, security)
Conclusion
who
kills
all
the
babies?
Random chance of birth to
parents with too few
resources
Corrupt governments with colonial legacies
global governance
privileging liberal ways
that marginalise the
poorest
COMMISERATE
Jesse Prinz
It’s not enough to
with victims.
UPPITY
We should get

Lecture 9 power and child mortality