Raise health budget, demand celebrities, students
November 26th, 2011 - 7:50 pm ICT by IANSNew Delhi, Nov 26 (IANS) From urban students to village dwellers to celebrities, brought together by a two-week campaign focusing on child health and infant mortality, have demanded an increase in the country’s health budget.
Organsied by NGO Save the Children campaign, the ‘No Child Born to Die’ campaign commenced Nov 12 and culminated Friday. It reached several states, including Delhi, Rajasthan, Bihar, Jharkhand, Maharashtra etc.
“We reached 10 colleges and 6,000 students in the Delhi University. They pledged support to the campaign and demanded an increase in the health budget to five percent of the GDP,” campaign manager Pragya Vats told IANS.
“The two weeks of action included actor Shabana Azmi asking for the increase too and theatre personality Lushin Dubey’s powerful solo play on the issue and a signature campaign,” she added.
According to Vats, a huge screen was mounted on the Statesman House building in central Delhi’s posh commercial hub Connaught Place while music bands and theatre groups from colleges performed at the site.
“We want to build a people’s movement so that children dying due to easily preventable diseases like pneumonia and diarrhoea are stopped. We lose 1.73 million children every year due to such causes,” she said.
“Members of the public can showcase their support by signing up at on our web portal — savethechildren.in,” Vats added.
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Tags: campaign manager, central delhi, child health, commercial hub, connaught place, delhi university, diarrhoea, dubey, health budget, infant mortality, music bands, pneumonia, preventable diseases, savethechildren, shabana azmi, signature campaign, statesman, theatre groups, urban students, web portal