Geneva: The death rate of children under 5 year of age had been decreases by 49% between 1990 and 2013 from 12.7 million to 6.3 million, claimed a report of United Nations on Tuesday.
Head of global health programs at UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Mickey Chopra said, “There has been dramatic and accelerating progress in reducing mortality among children, and the data prove that success is possible even for poorly resourced countries.”
The report had been compiled by UNICEF, the World Health Organisation, the World Bank, and the UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs, said that the rate for deaths of children under five fell from 90 deaths per 1000 live births in 1990 to 46 in 2013.
The report said that the rate fell from 100 per 1000 live births in 1990 to 50 in 2013 in developing regions. In rich, developed regions, the rate fell from 15 per 1000 live births in 1990 to six in 2013. In the United States, the decline was somewhat less dramatic, from 11 per 1000 live births in 1990 to seven in 2013.
The report also revealed the major causes of death for children under five are preterm birth complications (17%); pneumonia (15%); complications during labor and delivery (11%); diarrhea (9%); and malaria (7%).
The report also said that not having enough to eat contributed to nearly half of all deaths in children under five.
Children in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia remain at greater risk than their counterparts elsewhere on the globe. Nearly half of all child deaths in 2013, 3.1 million, occurred in sub-Saharan Africa. Nearly a third, 2 million, were in South Asia.
Bureau Report
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