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I would like to welcome you all to this information sharing session. As you know that government uses certain months as focus period to highlight specific issues and priorities. April is therefore a Health Month and we felt it was necessary to brief you on the series of events that will be taking place and how all of them link together around a common theme.

The theme for this year is "Healthy Environment for Children".

Within this month, we are going to highlight some of the health challenges facing our children and also initiate some interventions aimed at addressing these challenges.

Most of the problems relate to the poor conditions under which children and their families live including food insecurity, poor nutrition and exposure to various health risks.

Our studies have indicated that more than a quarter of our children have a micronutrient deficiency of one kind or another. One out of two children have less than half the required intake of energy, vitamins, calcium, iron and zinc.
These deficiencies have serious negative health and developmental effects on children.

As part of the activities for the Health Month, we will officially launch the national food fortification programme. We expect the regulations that bring into effect the fortification of bread and mealie meal to be published later this week. These regulations are going to prescribe to millers the amount of micronutrients to be added to bread and mealie meal.

This is one of our interventions against micronutrient deficiencies affecting children and many adults who cannot afford a balanced diet. It is a proven cost-effective strategy, which has been used successfully in a number of developed and developing countries.

World Health Day

We realise that the challenges facing children in rural and urban areas are not always the same. We are therefore organising two events to mark the World Health Day (April 7) that seek to attend to challenges facing each of these two settings.

The first event is focused on challenges facing children in rural areas such as lack of access to basic services including education, health, water and sanitation. This event will be held in Cofimvaba in the Eastern Cape on April 7. This is an area that was affected by a cholera outbreak in that province earlier this year.

On the following day (April 08), we will be in Cape Town where we are organising an urban focused event. This event should highlight challenges such as poisoning, bums and various other accidents and challenges that undermine the health of children in urban areas particularly in the historically disadvantaged areas including informal settlements.

These events will not be one-way communication activities where a speaker after speaker addresses the public. As they fall within the Government's Imbizo Focus Week, we will be encouraging the communities to raise their concerns and highlight their priorities and give us a general view of their expectations. It will be a real interaction, government meeting the people.

Africa Malaria Day

Within this month also, South Africa will join other SADC member-states in Rally Against Malaria. This is a regional initiative aimed at raising awareness about Malaria - a disease that is killing one million people a year, 90% of whom are from Africa.

Most of malaria victims are women and children and it affects at least three of our provinces (KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo and Mpumalanga). If uncontrolled, it becomes a major economic burden, as most of the malaria risk areas in our country fall within some of our best tourism regions.

Our journey will start in Ndumo area in Northern KZN and the team will drive through Mpumalanga and Limpopo into Zimbabwe and Zambia and culminate in a major Africa Malaria Day celebration in Tanzania on the 25'h April. There will be several awareness events on the way and we will join teams from other countries and reach Dar es Salaam as one big SADC family fighting malaria.

We have also extended an invitation to the members of the media to join us on this malaria control initiative.

There are other events spread throughout the month, which will be taking place in various provinces supporting the theme of a Healthy Environment for Children.

Some of the events are listed in the document that has been provided to you.
We hope you will join hands in a partnership to create a Healthy Environment for our Children and fighting diseases in our society.

Thank you.

Issued by Department of Health

31 March 2003