2012-09-14 15:02:55

Child deaths fell below 7 million in 2011


(September 14, 2012) The number of children under the age of five who die annually fell below 7 million in 2011, but UNICEF, the United Nations children's agency says about 19,000 boys and girls are still dying every day from largely preventable causes. A UNICEF report released on Wednesday said that more than 80 percent of all under-five deaths in 2011 occurred in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake said in the report that since these regions, especially sub-Saharan Africa, ``will account for the bulk of the world's births in the next years, we must give new impetus to the global momentum to reduce under-five deaths.'' He said lives can be saved with vaccines, adequate nutrition and basic medical and maternal care.
UNICEF hailed a sharp drop of about 40 percent in the number of children under the age of five dying, with the estimated global toll falling from nearly 12 million in 1990 to 6.9 million in 2011. Poor countries such as Bangladesh, Liberia and Rwanda, middle-income countries such as Brazil, Mongolia and Turkey, and high-income countries such as Oman and Portugal, all made what UNICEF described as dramatic gains, lowering their under-five death rates by more than two-thirds between 1990 and 2011.
More than half the pneumonia and diarrhoea deaths – which together account for almost 30 percent of under-five deaths worldwide - occur in just four countries: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, India, Nigeria and Pakistan. Vaccines to prevent pneumococcal disease and rotavirus, leading causes of pneumonia and diarrhoea, are widely available in wealthy countries but are still only gradually being rolled out in poorer nations. Barbara Frost, chief executive of British-based charity WaterAid, said UNICEF's report also underlined the need for urgent focus on improving sanitation and access to clean water in developing countries. The report showed that 11 percent of child deaths – equating to 759,000 a year or 2,079 a day - are due to diarrhoeal diseases, of which 88 percent can be attributed to a lack of clean water, safe sanitation and hygiene. Pneumonia is the biggest killer disease of children, according to the World Health Organisation. Latest data for 2010 shows that about one in three of the world's population still lack access to safe sanitation and one in 10 do not have clean drinking water.







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