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As part of the global community, we have achieved tremendous progress in improving people’s health worldwide. Along with our national, international and developing-country partners, we have cured 4 million people of tuberculosis, reduced measles deaths by half, saved the lives of 2 million children by providing vitamin A, and helped more people in the developing world access drug therapy for HIV/AIDS.
But we still face major challenges.
Every year, almost 11 million children under the age of 5 die from preventable illnesses. Also, HIV/AIDS annually claims about 3 million lives; tuberculosis, 2 million; and malaria, 1.2 million. As well, 529,000 women die each year of causes related to childbirth. The vast majority of these deaths occur in developing countries, where poverty, inequity and marginalization increase vulnerability and where major gaps in health services and agricultural production, as well as food insecurity, combine to limit progress against these threats to human health.
CIDA provides assistance
to improve the nutrition and health
of poor and vulnerable populations.
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The global community has identified health as a top priority. Three of the eight Millennium Development Goals directly target health: reduce child mortality; improve maternal health; and combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases. Canada is among the major donors to developing-country health programs and global health initiatives, including the areas of HIV/AIDS and children’s health.
Canada is committed to improving people’s health in the world’s poorest countries by focusing on preventing and controlling high-burden, poverty-linked diseases such as HIV/AIDS; improving infant and child health; strengthening sexual and reproductive health, including maternal morbidity and mortality; and improving food security and nutrition. To ensure that initiatives to improve people’s health are sustainable and that developing countries are equipped to respond to the health needs of their populations, CIDA will also scale up its efforts to strengthen health systems and human resources for health.
Women and girls suffer a disproportionate burden of disease, and gender equality plays an important role in improving people’s health. As such, CIDA works to explicitly integrate gender equality into all of our health and HIV/AIDS policies, programs, and projects.
CIDA’s work in health is also informed by a human rights framework in which health is viewed by the United Nations as a human right in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 25) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (Article 12).
Related CIDA Sites
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