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Poverty, war keep child mortality rates high
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
VATICAN-CHILDREN Nov-11-2008
Poverty, war keep child mortality rates high, says Vatican official
By Carol Glatz
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- While infant and child mortality rates have been slashed by more than half over the past 50 years, nearly 10 million children still die each year, said a Vatican official.
"We are still far from satisfactorily accomplishing the fourth Millennium Development Goal" to reduce child mortality, said Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, president of the Pontifical Council for Health Care Ministry. The U.N. goals, established in 2000 and intended to be reached by 2015, address issues such as hunger, education and poverty.
Cardinal Lozano said that 4 million newborns die within the first month from a combination of infectious diseases, malnutrition and poverty. While poverty remains the primary reason children contract diseases, armed conflict also has killed more than 2 million children and injured 6 million in the last decade, the cardinal said.
Children born in industrialized nations are not immune from poverty, he said, as one in six children in wealthier countries lives below the poverty line.
The cardinal spoke at a Nov. 11 press conference outlining an upcoming congress sponsored by the health care council. More than 40 experts were to discuss at the Nov. 13-15 international congress how the church can address the pastoral and spiritual needs of sick children and their families.
In response to a journalist's question concerning U.S. President-elect Barack Obama's support of embryonic stem-cell research, the cardinal said embryonic stem cells were believed "to be a panacea for everything."
However, recent research has shown that embryonic stem cells "are good for nothing," he said. Experiments and research using embryonic stem cells have not produced any positive results or potential cures, he said.
Instead, scientists have discovered success and real therapeutic promise from adult stem cells and umbilical-cord blood.
He said therapies and research using stem cells must follow the same ethical criteria used with organ transplants -- neither the donor nor the recipient's lives must be put at risk.
"No human being can be used as a means to let someone else live," he said.
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