CHILD HEALTH & DEVELOPMENT

Every child deserves to survive and thrive, today and in the future.

Grant Portfolio

Improvements in the survival, health and well-being of children, adolescents and their mothers are urgent, achievable and affordable.

In recent years, there has been great progress to reduce under-five mortality. But much more needs to be done to ensure mothers around the world have the best chance for a healthy pregnancy and safe birth.

One consequence of the incredible progress in reducing the deaths of newborn children is that the aspirations of new parents and their communities exceed mere survival. They want their children to grow strong and healthy, to do well in school and to be prepared for a rewarding life. In this respect we are still failing our children.

Another consequence of the dramatic improvements in child survival is an unprecedented population wave of adolescents, especially in Africa and South Asia. One sixth of the world’s population are adolescents – that’s 1.2 billion people between the ages of 10 and 19. Furthermore, adolescents are the only age group where deaths from AIDS are increasing – two million adolescents are living with HIV. Pregnancy at an early age robs girls of their life chances. It harms their health, education and future prospects. Childbearing at a young age also affects the health and well-being of a mother’s children. They are more likely to grow up stunted, with their bodies and brains less likely to develop properly.

Below, you will find more information on how we work with partners to ensure that every child has the chance to survive and thrive.


Safe & healthy births

Despite the great improvements in newborn mortality seen over the past several decades, there is still much to be done in order to ensure that every baby is born safe and healthy.

But despite this fact, millions of children and their mothers still die or are injured from preventable causes.

We aim to focus our attention equally on effective treatment as well as prevention. We also seek to build on the gains made in newborn mortality to influence the uptake of good practices across countries and support champions to advocate for sustainability.

Click here to learn more about our work on safe and healthy births.

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Nutrition

We have known for a long time that what happens to a child in the early years of its life – including pregnancy – is critical for the child’s development. And yet, nearly 22 million children around the world start life with a low birth weight.

We want to re-energise the fight to prevent low birth weight, in order to avoid stunting and accelerate children’s cognitive development. We want to be the ‘yes we can’ voice for children’s physical and cognitive development.

We want to demonstrate that low birth weight can be dramatically reduced by layering interventions against early pregnancy and short birth intervals, maternal infections, and insufficient nutrients during pregnancy.

Click here to learn more about our work on nutrition in the first 1,000 days and here to learn about our work on cognitive development.

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Even though there is a cost-effective treatment, it is estimated that severe acute malnutrition causes between 500,000 and 1 million deaths every year. That is 8-16% of all deaths of children under the age of five.

Over the past few years, the number of children successfully treated for severe acute malnutrition has increased, but 80% of children who need it are still not being treated and the issue is consistently overlooked as public health priority. Saving lives through treatment is increasing the burden on already weak and under-funded health systems. Meanwhile, a ‘prevention gap’ has been growing which threatens to unravel success seen to date.

We want to shake up the apathy that has settled in the nutrition and health communities, making severe acute malnutrition a public health priority. We want a world where no child dies from severe acute malnutrition.

Click here to learn more about our work on nutrition.

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Deworming

We believe in a world where every child is free from worms forever. We want to eliminate parasitic worms.

Over 800 million children are at risk of infection from parasitic worms known as soil-transmitted helminths and schistosomes. These worms cause silent and widespread suffering for which there is a simple and effective solution.

Our mission is to work with partners to fund and support evidence-based and sustainable children’s deworming programmes at scale.

Click here to learn more about our work on deworming.

Investments

Current multi-year investments can be explored below.

To learn more about closed grants, use our grant portfolio tool.