Tragic child death rate
AT the risk of being accused of focusing on “negative” news, we feel compelled to comment upon the latest figures on child mortality in our region.
A recently released Unicef report titled The State of Asia Pacific’s Children 2008, shows that our country has the highest level of under five-year-old deaths in the South Pacific.
The figures are, in this day and age, alarming; Unicef quotes 73 deaths per 1,000 births as the current Papua New Guinea level.
Given that PNG has now passed the halfway time span towards meeting the United Nations Millennium Development Goal of 2015 to cut the child death rate by two thirds, the challenge appears almost non-achievable.
There is no mystery about the cause of these deaths.
A burgeoning child birth rate adds extra stress to an already inadequate system of child birth facilities, particularly in more inaccessible and remote areas.
The long-established threats to the survival of the young PNG child remain depressingly the same – pneumonia, diarrhoea and malnutrition.
On top of these familiar negatives, we can add vast inequalities in income, in geography, gender and ethnicity.
PNG is a land of many environments – the world’s largest ocean washes our shores with many of our people in isolated island communities.
Towering mountains dot the backbone of the country; some areas are inhospitably cold and subsistence crops can be hard to sustain.
Other regions have extensive savannah grasslands whose borders are often flooded by the many rivers that snake through their midst.
Childbirth in such circumstances is never easy.
A woman about to deliver in a remote Sepik or an isolated Highlands community has little to depend upon when ready to give birth except the traditions of her people.
In a hard season, with food at a minimum, such a woman is already at risk.
Add the scarcity of accessible transport, the poorly maintained or non-existent roads, the often neglected airstrips or the difficulties of getting a mother experiencing a troubled birth to medical assistance many kilometres down a flooded river, the miracle is that the total of child deaths is not significantly higher.
Even in urban and peri-urban areas, the young child is at considerable risk.
Despite valiant attempts to educate young mothers, the sight of infants with soft drink bottles forced into their tiny mouths, or being offered totally unsuitable take-away food to eat, is all too familiar.
Nor is there widespread recognition that the state of the mother’s health is crucial to the successful birth and early survival of the child.
Underweight mothers, mothers who prove to be diabetic, women who suffer during pregnancy from domestic violence, and women who simply have no concept of the child-birth process other than that proffered from within the village are at high risk of losing their children.
Cultural practices that see the mother as merely a part of a process that gifts the father with another child also add to the maternal death rate.
The idea that the pregnant mother deserves exceptional care in order to successfully give birth and nurture the child through the early years has yet to take root in the bulk of the country.
We are all aware of the parlous state of our rural health services, of the low regard such facilities attract from warring tribesmen who seem determined to stay mired in the past and of the ignorance of young women about the processes their bodies are going through during pregnancy and childbirth.
It is easy enough to blame an uncaring Government – easy and false. To wave a magic wand and populate the country with a satisfactory level of medical facilities and with properly trained staff would require the allocation of huge sums of money simply not available to any one sector of our economy.
Yet, we must make the attempt to carve inroads into those tragic figures.
This calls for not only the injection of all possible funds into the health sector, but the speedy development of trained staff with a level of dedication and commitment not always seen on the ground.
Both governments and communities must join to achieve the millennium development health goals in the name of our mothers and the next generation.
 
Teaching less to learn more

By SEAH CHIANG NEE
 THE complex plan to produce a new generation of innovative Singaporeans with high-tech knowledge and diverse skills is slowly taking shape in the schools.
It is moving the education system some distance away from mere book learning in a number of primary and secondary schools.
Students (including 80,000 foreigners) are going through interesting times. Many are now able to take up study options that will lead to new career opportunities not available before. From next year, Secondary Three students in eight schools will be able to take up 3-D animation as a new O-level subject.
“I’ve always been interested in animated films, so I’m very interested to know how to bring all these images to life,” a 14-year-old said.
He hopes to be one of 20 students from Dunman Secondary to break into a film career. It is one of a number of applied subjects that are making their presence felt in the education system.
A quiet evolution is beginning to sweep across Singapore schools on a scale that has even taken parents by surprise. Two other applied subjects – enterprise development and fundamentals of electronics – will also be introduced in 2009. Others already in place in other schools are design and technology, food and nutrition and principles of accounts.
The changes, it is hoped, will produce a new tech-savvy, hands-on worker, who knows the basic aspects of high tech or the practical sciences. These are still pioneering days, but they already have the making of a success story.
Faced with competition from the likes of China and India, the city-state believes its future prosperity lies in training an innovative, tech-savvy workforce that can compete on ideas. A newspaper reader praised the “Teach less, learn more” strategy, which has reshaped education into what it is today – a balance between academic and non-academic pursuits.
For a start, schools are moving into practical studies as an examination subject or a module or elective.
The courses range from filmmaking to designing, from information technology (IT) to nutrition and cooking, and from music and the arts to professional sports, and a new environment course for children.
School dropouts, who usually end up as lowly-paid, semi-skilled workers, now see new hope in some of these courses, which can lead them towards a non-academic career. Some may even outshine their peers in the top elite schools in courses like cooking or designing or music composing.
Schools will, however, remain focused on the core goals of education, planning lessons around the national curriculum and preparing students for national examinations.
Across the island, more students are being exposed to various innovative teaching ideas, including the following:
Innovation – Chua Chu Kang primary pupils will soon begin to design and study robots as part of its curriculum;
Cooking/nutrition – about 20 parent volunteers have taught 2,400 pupils at Fuchun Primary School how to cook a healthy meal for themselves;
Business – some students, aged 14 to 15, are learning business operation by working with a diverse number of major companies, like Nestle and McDonald’s, and e-mailing them critiques on how to improve operations;
Food science – other schools are training food innovators to use science in the kitchen to produce new gastronomic products;
Music – the only university-level music school, which started in 2003, the Yong Siew Toh conservatory of music, has just passed out its first batch of 44 graduates, half of whom are pursuing further studies in Europe;
Arts – in January the first school of arts opened with a pioneer batch of 139 Secondary One and 100 Secondary Two students, teaching subjects like ballet, music and dances. Until now, they’re taught only as electives in school. It joined a sports school, which started last year; and
Environment – four secondary schools have introduced practical lessons on the environment to give children a hands-on knowledge of green issues, including water management, air quality and ways to prevent air pollution.

Note: The author is a former newspaper editor in Singapore and now writes a weekly column for a Malaysian newspaper.

Editorial