Inaugural meeting on international child health in Melbourne

International Child Health: Tackling the Big Killers of Children in Resource-Poor Settings

1 February 2010: International medical-humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières, and the Centre for International Child Health at the University of Melbourne, will host a one-day seminar on 5 February 2010, the first of its kind in Australia.

To be held at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, the seminar will bring together experts from all over the world and Australia who will talk about the high mortality of children worldwide, the major conditions which are fatal for children, and what is being done to improve children’s survival and their health. 

“About 22,000 children under the age of five die every day, most of them in developing countries. The causes of death include neonatal infections, low birth weight, pneumonia, diarrhoea, malaria, HIV, tuberculosis and malnutrition.  Malnutrition contributes to about half of the deaths—yet the majority of deaths due to all these causes are preventable,” said Dr. Myrto Schaefer, Head of the Project Unit for Médecins Sans Frontières in Australia.

The specialist speakers will present on topics including malaria in southeast Asia, best-practice treatment for malnutrition, HIV in children in Africa, immunisation and new vaccines.

“The challenges are many, particularly the lack of trained health workers in developing countries and insufficient funding for child health.  However many developing countries are making great progress, with child death rates falling substantially since 1990.  Training more nurses and doctors and increasing the number of girls attending school are crucial to reducing child deaths further” said Professor Trevor Duke, Director of the Centre for International Child Health.

For more information about the seminar go to www.ichseminar.com and for interviews please contact Sally McMillan on 0447 482 379 or 02 8570 2611 or sally.mcmillan(at)sydney.msf.org

Médecins Sans Frontières is an international medical-humanitarian organisation providing assistance in around 60 countries. In 2004, a Project Unit was established in the Sydney office in order to provide medical and operational support to field projects around the world. It now has two foci: paediatric healthcare (promotion and development of quality care for children with HIV/AIDS), and women’s health.

The Centre for International Child Health (CICH) was established in 2001 within the University of Melbourne’s Department of Paediatrics at the Royal Children’s Hospital and is affiliated with the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute. CICH is a World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Research & Training in Child & Neonatal Health.  Along with the Burnet Institute in Melbourne and the Menzies School of Health Research in Darwin, CICH forms the AusAID Women’s and Children’s Health Knowledge Hub.