Literacy, a life-saver

One of our colleagues recently wrote a blog about an article in the current Wycliffe Bible Translators Magazine; Words for Life. An extract from the article reads:

Anée wept bitterly as she held her baby close to her chest. She was filled with a confusion of anger, grief and guilt. She was supposed to have taken the medicine herself and the baby would have benefitted through her milk. But she didn’t understand the doctor’s instructions, and she can’t read, so she gave the medicine directly to her baby. Her newborn daughter died from a tragic and avoidable overdose. Information poverty kills…

Children who learn to read and write in their mother tongue before bridging to the official language flourish and fly, while those who have to do it all in French often flounder and fail. It still troubles me that while in the UK only six children out of 1,000 live births die before the age of five, in Chad it’s 200 children. So many of those deaths are avoidable. There is a direct link between mothers being able to read and infant mortality. Mothers who can read have children who live longer.

This reality of the importance of literacy must be understood. Reading is not just a luxury that is nice and fun, a skill to be able to engage with new technology like the Kindle or iPad! No, reading (and writing) is very often the difference between life and death. To read the whole article you can download the magazine here, the article starts on page 9.