We know of good working examples of the integrated approach that ensures children's survival and brings out their potential. Programmes in India, Jamaica, Kenya, Peru and Turkey, for example, offer important lessons and hold out promise for similar gains elsewhere. So too does an evolving integrated early childhood care and development approach in the Philippines, which demonstrates the success communities have had in weaving together health, nutrition, psychosocial care and early education services for young children. This programme aims to cut infant and child mortality, malnutrition and elementary school drop-out rates by half. These are crucial objectives in a country where nearly one third of children are underweight or stunted, and the under-five mortality rate is 44 deaths per 1,000 live births.
Children receive their routine immunizations at the health station.
Health workers maintain a map of all houses in the community in which is recorded every child's growth, access to iodized salt and other micronutrients and the availability of clean water and sanitation. More importantly, the services are accessible within communities and are locally run. They include health care, day care, primary education and parent-effectiveness training. These health and nutrition posts provide mothers with a venue to meet, discuss health, nutrition and psychosocial needs of their babies, to be counselled by the village health worker and to have access to basic services such as vitamin A and iron supplements. In the tiny island province of Guimaras, where child poverty rates exceed 70 per cent, a child-minding centre exists for poor families, allowing both parents to work.