The UNICEF charity has just released figures that show a 28% decline in the rate of deaths of children under 5 years of age in the last 2 decades. These figures are encouraging, but with an estimated 8.8 million children still dying across the globe, there is still a tremendous amount of work needed to increase their worldwide mortality rate.
The results, finalised by analysis from UNICEF, the World Health Organization, the World Bank and the United Nations Population Division, shows that the average rate of decline in the last 9 years is 2.3 per cent, compared to a 1.4 per cent average decline from 1990 to 2000. Through these small percentage rises, the death rate reduction has seen 4 million more under 5’s survive across the globe, a figure that should continue to rise in the future.
UNICEF Executive Director, Ann M. Veneman, said –
Compared to 1990, 10,000 fewer children are dying every day. While progress is being made, it is unacceptable that each year 8.8 million children die before their fifth birthday. A handful of countries with large populations bear a disproportionate burden of under-five deaths, with forty per cent of the world’s under-five deaths occurring in just three countries: India, Nigeria, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Unless mortality in these countries can be significantly reduced, the MDG targets will not be met. Achieving the Millennium Development Goal target of a two-thirds reduction in under-five mortality by 2015 will require a strong sense of urgency with targeted resources for greater progress.
The increase in global immunisations and vaccinations is a key reason why positive results have followed, though this is not the case in all countries. In South Africa the under 5 mortality rate has actually gone up in the last 20 years, due to the fact that South Africa has the highest number of women with HIV in the world. The two leading causes of death is pneumonia and diarrhea, though with new vaccines against pneumococcal pneumonia and rotaviral diarrhea, the mortality rate should continue to rise slowly but surely.
