Children’s health

Serious, untreated complications during pregnancy or delivery can be fatal to both mother and infant. Our maternal health programs in more than 25 countries focus on reducing maternal and infant mortality through prenatal consultations, emergency obstetric care, postnatal follow-up, and access to family planning services, and safe abortion care.

The main causes of newborn death are prematurity and low birth weight, sepsis (a severe general infection), and birth asphyxia (a medical condition resulting from lack of oxygen during birth). The majority of these complications are preventable or treatable, as long as they are diagnosed early enough by a skilled, trained attendant.

More than 232 million children around the world last year suffered from malnutrition. It is the underlying contributing factor in nearly half of the deaths of children under five years of age.

When children suffer from acute malnutrition, their immune systems are so impaired that they become more vulnerable to other diseases. A common cold or a bout of diarrhea can kill a malnourished child. Undernutrition in children can include wasting, stunting, being underweight, and suffering from deficiencies in vitamins and minerals. Nearly half of deaths among children under 5 years of age are linked to undernutrition in 2022.

In a resource-poor setting or when a humanitarian crisis breaks out, children are often exposed to preventable diseases due to lack of water, hygiene, and access to health care.

For children aged 1-59 months, the most deadly threats are pneumonia, diarrhea, and malaria—often complicated by malnutrition. In areas of Africa, infectious diseases account for 60 percent of deaths of children under the age of five.

Many of these deaths could be prevented by immunization, but widespread health care gaps around the world are a barrier to accessing this care.

Older children and young adolescents can be affected by chronic diseases such as diabetes, asthma, and epilepsy, especially in low and middle-income countries. Children will live with these often preventable conditions for the rest of their lives. To help manage their disease and avoid long-term complications that can become fatal, children and their families need comprehensive, long-term treatment and support, but this is often sorely lacking in resource-poor settings.

Over the past 10 years, MSF has increased the number of mental health consultations in our projects by 230 percent worldwide. Young people have diverse, complex psychological needs, from war-wounded and traumatized children in the Middle East, to families fleeing conflict and making perilous journeys across Africa, Central America, and the Mediterranean Sea.

In Palestine, our teams of psychologists and counselors hold individual and group sessions with adults, teenagers, and children who have experience trauma due to the recent escalation of violence. In 2020, MSF teams held group mental health activities for child asylum seekers who were indefinitely detained on the Greek island of Lesbos, observing that nearly 25 percent of children had self-harmed, attempted suicide, or thought about committing suicide. Many children suffered from panic attacks and constant nightmares. The war in Ukraine has also created an immense need for mental health support for both adults and children suffering the long-lasting effects of violence.

Our projects help give babies a strong start with neonatal care and early childhood checkups, provide the nutrition they need to thrive, and ensure that they receive critical vaccinations to protect them from preventable—but deadly—diseases.

We work to keep children healthier and reduce the risk of serious illness by effectively preventing, detecting, and treating sickness. To better diagnose and treat children, MSF provides local health structures with high-quality medical equipment, labs, and microbiology services. We also provide our child patients with access to lifesaving drugs, and we campaign for lower drug prices to increase access.

MSF is committed to meeting our pediatric patients where they are, including rural and remote areas. We train community health workers on how to provide medical check-ups, screenings for malnutrition, testing and treating malaria, and more.

In emergency settings, our pediatric response includes interventions such as vaccination to prevent outbreaks of communicable diseases such as measles, therapeutic feeding to treat severe acute malnutrition, and outpatient services in camps for refugees and internally displaced people.

For our youngest patients, vaccination is tied to both prenatal and postnatal care. A standard part of prenatal care is a tetanus vaccine, which protects the mother, whose antibodies transfer to protect her baby as well. After babies are born, they begin to receive routine vaccinations at their six-week postnatal visit.

MSF is increasingly adopting a more comprehensive approach to get children started, or caught up, on routine vaccination packages. For example, in Borno State, Nigeria, children suffering from acute malnutrition get childhood vaccinations as a part of their care. In Mali, mobile health teams target underserved children with a strategy combining seasonal malaria prevention, rapid nutritional assessment, and vaccination.

Prenatal care improves a mother’s health during her pregnancy and helps reduce or manage complications for both mother and newborn. During consultations, MSF teams can inform women, their families, and birth attendants about how to recognize complications and how to prepare for emergencies. Women can also learn where they can go for delivery or emergency care if needed.

Because many maternal deaths occur after the baby is born, postnatal care is critical. The first six weeks following childbirth is the most dangerous time for mother and baby. MSF staff try to see women twice for postnatal care. The first visit involves checking for medical issues that require immediate attention for the mother, which include heavy vaginal bleeding, fevers, severe headaches, and hypertension. Our staff also care for the baby, providing a “birth dose” of vaccinations and checking breathing, nutrition, and overall health. In the second visit, at around six weeks, the baby starts receiving routine vaccinations.

MSF works on multiple fronts to stop infectious diseases in their tracks. We prioritize vaccination campaigns as part of our routine pediatric care to protect children from diseases like measles. About 80 percent of our vaccination work is targeted at children.

We work to improve hygiene and restore sanitation infrastructure in low-income and conflict-affected areas to prevent diarrheal diseases, which are a leading cause of death among children under five.

To prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV, we have opened programs in parts of the world most affected by HIV/AIDS, implementing measures like antiretroviral treatment for the mother and antiretroviral drugs for the baby, together with appropriate breastfeeding practices.

MSF screens communities for potential malnutrition by proactively conducting nutritional assessments, even for services not dedicated specifically to nutrition.

MSF distributes ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF), the most effective way to treat malnutrition. These foods include all the nutrients a child needs during their development and help reverse deficiencies and gain weight. RUTFs don’t require water for preparation, which eliminates the risk of contamination from waterborne diseases, and can be stored long-term without refrigeration.

In some regions, our teams run malnutrition prevention projects to stop children from falling ill. Our preventative approach includes distributing a nutritious supplement to at-risk children across Africa and Asia and implementing other disease prevention initiatives, like vaccinations and malaria prevention.