Why ECD are Important for IBU

Monday, 15 December 2008 00:30

The reasons for investing in Early Childhood Development programs are numerous and interrelated. A child's ability to think, form relationship, and live up to his or her full potential is directly related to the synergistic effect of good health, better nutrition, and appropriate stimulation and interaction with others. It has been proven that children who participate in well-conceived ECD programs tend to be more successfully in later school are more component socially and emotionally and show higher verbal and intellectual development during early childhood than children who are not enrolled in high quality programs.

 

Global estimates indicate that the equivalent of an extra year of healthy life can be obtained by spending $25 to $30 on immunization, vitamin A, and Iodine supplementation or about $63 on food supplementation. For comparison, prenatal and delivery care cost $60 to $110 for each healthy life-year gained. Giving children a good start, a little goes a long way: 4 cents for two capsules of Vitamin A to help protect a child for up to one year from blindness or deaths due to measles, diarrhea, or other infections; 30 cents for a five day antibiotic course for effectively treating a child with pneumonia and $5 for 100 packets of ORS to protect children from deaths from diarrheal dehydration. These ECD interventions are not only quit cheap to implement, but also save later goverment expenditure on much more expensive hospital care and rehabilitation. And they are good for equity, because the children of the poor suffer disproportianetely from ill health and malnutrition (UNICEF).

 

 

A golden period of human development is between 0-5 years, therefore investment for program intervention for children under 5 are critical to produce a good quality of human for the future. Many study has given fact that early childhood development are important to carried out to create a good quality of human in order to catch the golden period of human development.

 

IBU Foundation continue promoting program which ensure that children meet their basic need to grow and developed to become a good quality children for the future through Posyandu and also ECD in rural and remote places.