The annual number of deaths of children under the age of five dropped to less than 7 million in 2011. However, according to a report of the U.N. children’s agency, around 19,000 boys and girls around the world are still dying every day from causes that can be prevented.
The report by the United Nations Children’s Fund revealed that four-fifths of under-five deaths last year occurred in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. More than half of the number of children who died of pneumonia and diarrhea — which is almost 30 percent of under-five deaths worldwide — occur in just four countries: Congo, India, Nigeria and Pakistan.
According to UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake, these regions, especially sub-Saharan Africa, will account for the increase of the world’s births in the next years.
Lake also pointed out that youngsters from disadvantaged and marginalized families in poor and fragile nations are the most likely to die before their fifth birthday. Nevertheless, we should know that their lives can be saved with vaccines, better nutrition and basic medical and maternal care.
He said that the world has the technology and knows how to help. The real problem is to make these things available to every child.
According to UNICEF, the rate of decline in under-five deaths has increased sharply in the last decade. It climbed from 1.8 percent per year during the 1990s to 3.2 percent per year between 2000 and 2011.
Lake said that more children now survive their fifth birthday than ever before. Fortunately, the global number of children who died under the age of five has decreased from around 12 million in 1990 to an estimated 6.9 million in 2011.
The report highlights that the location and economic status of a country should not be a barrier to decreasing the number of child deaths.
Low income countries including Bangladesh, Liberia and Rwanda, middle income countries such as Brazil, Mongolia and Turkey, and high income countries including Oman and Portugal have gained a lot. According to the report, they reduced their under-five mortality rates by more than two-thirds between 1990 and 2011.
UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Geeta Rao Gupta, however, underscores that there is “unfinished business” and the problem does not lie only in the number of child deaths. He said that a child’s death is even more tragic when it is caused by a disease that can easily be prevented. That is why the aim of the global movement is to to recommit to child survival and to end child deaths. The decline in the death rate indicates that this is an achievable goal.
