“Read the instructions for this medication and consult a pharmacist” is a common piece of advice. But what do you do if you do not understand the instructions? Or worse, if you do not know where to get the instructions or find a pharmacist? In sub-Saharan Africa, thousands of languages ​​and ethnicities coexist. Diversity is abundant, although it can be dangerous for those who live in a region where their language differs from the predominant one. The infant mortality rate is higher among those from an ethnic group different than that of their neighbors and the children who survive often present stunted growth.

In Mali, a country of less than 18 million inhabitants, up to 68 different languages ​​are spoken, according to the Ethnologue database. Tamasheq is among the most frequently spoken languages. Mariam and Anita have been friends since childhood and speak this language, but face completely different realities. Mariam shares this language with her neighbors, while Anita lives in an area where Songhaykoyrachiini predominates; there, she does not understand informational pamphlets. They speak the same language, but Anita's children are more likely to die than Mariam's.

Families that have never left their village suffer most from the effects of this phenomenon. This isn’t about foreigners, but rather about those have never experienced another reality or been able to get information elsewhere. Those who suffer the most are local people who feel like foreigners in their own home.

Diarrhea kills almost two million children under the age of five every year. Dehydration most often is the direct cause of death. Oral rehydration salts have proven to be one of the cheapest and most effective methods to save children who do not have adequate healthcare infrastructure in their country. However, many people do not know about them. Research entitled The Health Costs of Ethnic Distance: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa, led by Joseph Gomes, a researcher at the Navarra Center for International Development (NCID), attempts to calculate the health costs of being from an ethnic family that differs from the predominant one in the region.

Ethnic distance also effects the growth of surviving children; lack of information about dietary habits that generates malnutrition and the diarrhea that causes dehydration hinder growth and cause atrophy in children, who grow up with below-average height for their age.

One in nine children in sub-Saharan Africa dies before reaching age five. Making sure that information reaches the whole population could easily save many lives. Public policies must cover the entire population and cannot leave out ethnic minorities when distributing vital medical information. No child should die because his family does not speak the same language as his neighbors.