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Summary: Poor families across Africa go without food and other basic needs to pay doctors fees to try to keep their children alive, according to new research from Save the Children UK published as experts gather in London tomorrow at an international conference on child survival.
The cost of coping with illness [12 December 2005] - Poor families across Africa go without food and other basic needs to pay doctors fees to try to keep their children alive, according to new research from Save the Children UK published as experts gather in London tomorrow at an international conference on child survival. Save the Children UK research carried out over the last five years in Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ethiopia, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda found that poor households go without food, take children out of school, sell livestock and belongings, and mortgage crops to pay for treatment when their children fall ill. Save the Children UK Head of Health Anna Taylor said, "Whilst parents in the UK are deciding whether to buy children the latest Xbox for Christmas, parents across sub-Saharan Africa are forced to decide whether the rest of the family should go without food to send a sick child to a clinic. It’s a choice no parent should ever have to make." The findings point to the urgent need to make long-term investments so families do not have to pay for medical care. Save the Children UK research shows that if fees for healthcare were abolished in 20 countries in Africa, the lives of about 250,000 children under the age of five would be saved each year. “When my elder sister was sick, she paid for her own medical care with the money she earned. Her condition didn’t improve. Our family later decided that our brother should sell all her belongings so that we could get money to take her to hospital. The money brought was used up, but my sister didn’t recover. My father put his coconut plantation in pawn and we took her to a traditional healer but she didn’t recover. In the end she died and my father lost his plantation.” From focus-group discussion in Lindi Rural District, Tanzania Browse the publication by chapter: