“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not.”

— Dr. Seuss

Photo: Pastoral da Criança

Doutora Zilda, as she was affectionately known in Brazil, became a giant in the field of children’s public health by developing an innovative, practical and inexpensive method of basic care service for infants anchored on a deep sense of human solidarity.

I felt that God, in a certain way, had prepared me for this mission.

A pioneer in children's health care, Zilda Arns Neumann created a sprawling network of volunteers who monitor the health of millions of children in Brazil and 20 other nations. She died in the Haiti earthquake while on a mission to support local volunteers for the organization she founded, Pastoral da Criança, or the Child's Pastoral. She was 75.

Dona Zilda, as she became known in Brazil, founded Pastoral da Criança in 1983 in southern Brazil at the behest of her brother, Paulo Evaristo Arns, who at the time was cardinal of São Paolo. The organization has grown to include 260,000 volunteers, who teach mothers the importance of breastfeeding, monitor vaccinations, and distribute a recipe for home-made oral rehydration salts that Dr. Arns devised. At a festive "Day of Celebration," held every month, children from the community come together to be weighed.

The program costs about $1 per month per child and has cut child mortality in half in the communities in which it operates, Pastoral da Criança says. The Brazilian government twice nominated Dr. Arns for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Originally a joint venture between the Roman Catholic Church and UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund, Pastoral da Criança grew from a small program in rural southern Brazil to encompass more than two-thirds of the municipalities in the country. Today it is largely supported by the Brazilian government but run through the Catholic Church. Church auspices are critical to the organization's success, because the church is more trusted and respected than the government.

Dr. Arns, a devout Catholic who kept a photograph of herself and Pope John Paul II on her office wall, often said the model for her work was the New Testament story in which Jesus fed a multitude with only a few loaves and fishes. The parable, she said, inspired her to work with a decentralized organization and volunteers.

One of 13 children of German immigrants, Dr. Arns's mother served as an informal rural medic in Forquilhinha, the small town where the family lived. Dr. Arns attended medical school, and beginning in 1959 worked as a pediatrician in Curitiba, Brazil.

Her sensitivity to society's most vulnerable members was heightened by the tragedies in her own life. She lost two of her children, and her husband was killed trying to rescue another child from drowning.

In a speech to the Port-au-Prince gathering of volunteers shortly before her death, Dr. Arns recalled the moment that her brother, the cardinal, asked her to start a children's health outreach. "I felt happy with the challenge," Dr. Arns said. "I felt that God, in a certain way, had prepared me for this mission.

"Like the birds that take care of their children by building a nest high up in the trees and the mountains, far from predators' threats and dangers and nearer God, we should watch over our children as something sacred, promote and respect their rights and protect them."

In a statement, her brother said that Dr. Arns "died in the cause she has always believed."

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