Child registration for a healthy start to life
SCA has entered into a new partnership that will lead to better health for children in Laghman. Focus will be on registration on children to ensure that they receive all essential health care including vaccinations, nutrition and growth monitoring.
Every child has the right to be registered and have a healthy start to life, no matter where they live. This is what unites IKEA Foundation, Swedish Committee for Afghanistan, District Health Team in Uganda and Shifo Foundation from three continents – Asia, Africa and Europe – together.
In the beginning of 2013, the Shifo team began discussions with the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan (SCA) about the possibility of jointly strengthening child health service delivery in Afghanistan. In March 2013, a team from Shifo was invited to SCA’s Kabul Management Office to learn about the health system in Afghanistan, the progress and challenges faced.
From September 2015 mutual collaboration started to strengthen child health services in Afghanistan and Uganda in the framework of Every Child Counts-MyChild system in Afghanistan and Uganda Programme.
Shifo has experience from Uganda, where they implemented MyChild system in two district. This experience is instrumental to share in Afghanistan and work together to reach every child with life-saving health services in both countries.
The team found that Afghanistan had achieved considerable improvements in health service delivery within a challenging period of 13 years, and had developed clear structures to increase access and improve quality of health services. However, the challenge remained to reach every person with essential health services. The under-five mortality rate in Afghanistan is high – 91 per 1000 live births, and 60% of children aged 12 to 23 months are not fully immunised. Child malnutrition is also a significant contributor to child mortality with high prevalence of chronic malnutrition among 39% of all children under the age of five. Shifo will work together with SCA to address the challenges that are preventing us from ensuring that every child is fully immunised and receives essential health services in order to grow strong and healthy.
In the beginning of November the partners met in Stockholm to plan strategic activities for the next coming three years together.
“We are very happy to work with Shifo on the same objectives. The innovative thinking and approach in this work brings us together to improve the livelihoods for children in Afghanistan. Our starting point is Laghman Province, where SCA has worked since 2009 implementing Basic Package of Health Services”, says Humayon Safi, Health Programme Manager, SCA.
“The IKEA Foundation believes every child has the right to a healthy start in life, so we are supporting Shifo with a 1.2 million euro grant to make this right a reality for thousands of vulnerable children in Uganda and Afghanistan”, says Jonathan Spampinato, Head of Strategic Planning and Communications.
Shifo’s work in Afghanistan is directed to identifying and closing gaps in child health service delivery.
“We want to be part of long-term development in Afghanistan. For us it means addressing the root causes of problems in child health and working with our partners to build a strong foundation to continuously improve the quality of health services”, says Rustam Nabiev, Director of Shifo Foundation.
Also read:
About Every Child Counts – MyChild system in Afghanistan and Uganda Programme