Aviva Lilia Bernardo Kullberg Women in ScienceFund

Often times, loving and dedicated parents do their best to keep their babies alive after birth, but neonatal health complications, sometimes beyond our understanding, beyond our science and beyond medicine, lead to innocent lives ending too soon, as loved ones watch helplessly.

According to OurWorldInData 2019 Statistics, 15,000 children die everyday, one-quarter of infants die in their first year of life and 1 in 27 children die before they reach the age of 5. Child Mortality is an everyday devastating tragedy of enormous scale that rarely makes the headlines.

In the celebration of the life of an Angel, Aviva Lilia, the Open Dreams Families in Bamenda, Buea, Douala and Yaounde visited the pediatric units (nurseries) of hospitals to comfort and celebrate Christmas with babies and children striving to survive infancy.

During the visit as part of their community engagement, Open Dreams Scholars listened to parents and medical personnel while drawing inspiration and reflecting on what we can all do scientifically, socially etc to reduce child and infant mortality rate and to improve survival and well-being.

The SDGs adopted by the UN in 2015 were developed to promote healthy lives and well-being for all; to end preventable deaths of newborns and under-5 (#SDG3). By 2030, the target is to reduce infant mortality to as low as 12 per 1000 live births in every country, and to reduce under-5 mortality to as low as 25 per 1000 in every country.

To achieve the goals, we must co

Often times, loving and dedicated parents do their best to keep their babies alive after birth, but neonatal health complications, sometimes beyond our understanding, beyond our science and beyond exisiting medicine, lead to innocent lives ending too soon, as loved ones watch helplessly. According to OurWorldInData 2019 Statistics, 15,000 children die every day, one-quarter of infants die in their first year of life and 1 in 27 children die before they reach the age of 5. Child Mortality is an everyday devastating tragedy of enormous scale that rarely makes the headlines. In the celebration of the life of an Angel, Aviva Lilia, the Open Dreams Families in Bamenda, Buea, Douala and Yaounde visited the pediatric units (nurseries) of hospitals to comfort babies and children striving to survive infancy.

During the visit as part of their community engagement, Open Dreams Scholars listened to parents and medical personnel while drawing inspiration, reflecting and taking notes on what we can all do scientifically, socially etc to reduce child and infant mortality rate and to improve survival and well-being. The SDGs adopted by the UN in 2015 were developed to promote healthy lives and well-being for all; to end preventable deaths of newborns and under-5 (#SDG3). By 2030, the target is to reduce infant mortality to as low as 12 per 1000 live births in every country, and to reduce under-5 mortality to as low as 25 per 1000 in every country.

To achieve the goals, we must commit to more medical research and innovation. It is on this basis that:

 1)      We have stepped up focus on medical research to curb neonatal fatalities. There is a specialized unit of medical scholars at Open Dreams across hospitals in Cameroon and beyond, doing research at the local level and making presentations to the Open Dreams Scholars at the Yaoundé Center on a regular basis.

2)      We have a partnership with CORE Africa, an organization out to strengthen health research capacity. Over the past 5 months, we have held over 8 workshops.

3)      Five members of the Open Dreams Family who are medical practitioners shall be heading to the UK and the USA to study specialized programs in the areas of population health and curbing infant mortality rate. Two others, are studying health programs in Ghana on a fee-paying basis, all with enormous financial support from Open Dreams. In all, there are 5 girls in the study program.

4)      Some scholars returning for the summer holidays will be carrying out internship programs in the local hospitals, most of them focused on the causes of child mortality while seeking ways to reduce the rate.

5)      More Open Dreams Scholars are taking an interest in health research, a priority area for our programs, which encourages innovation and solutions to community challenges.

 With continues support and donations, we plan to assist more young girls into medical fields and to promote research on human development. Thank you for kick-starting it with your donations