 A NEWBORN child in Sierra Leone has the lowest chance in the world of
surviving until age five, with the prospects almost as bad for children in
Angola and Afghanistan, according to a report released today by the UN's
children's fund.
In 2006, nearly 9.7 million children died worldwide before reaching the age
of five, mostly from preventable causes such as diarrhoea, malaria or
malnutrition, UNICEF said in its annual report.
But progress has been made
in a number of regions and strengthening local health services holds great
promise for reducing the child mortality rate, said the 154-page document, The
State of the World's Children 2008.
More than 26,000 children under the age of five die each day on average.
In 2006, the latest year for which statistics are available, Sierra Leone had
the highest child mortality rate, with 270 deaths per 1,000 births. Angola came
second with 260 deaths per 1,000 births, followed by Afghanistan with 257 deaths
per 1,000 births.
The worldwide under-five mortality rate in 2006 was 72 deaths per 1,000
births. The average rate of industrialised countries was six deaths per 1,000
births.
"The loss of 9.7 million young lives each year is unacceptable, especially
when many of these deaths are preventable," said UNICEF executive director Ann
Veneman.
The deaths could be prevented by simple health care measures, such as
vaccination, insecticide-treated bed nets and vitamin supplements, the report
said. But the measures must be taken all together and applied in each village to
reach every child, even in the remotest regions of the world, it said.
"We know exactly what works," said Angela Hawke of UNICEF, referring to
strategies the agency has been promoting for some time.
"But we need to make sure that these kinds of services are integrated at the
most local level, in the villages where children live," she said, adding that
governments and health experts should define the best solutions for each
community.
"We want to make sure that there are local health services that really work
with properly staffed health centres ... and there's a proper national health
plan,'' Hawke told The Associated Press.
Sierra Leone, which suffered an 11-year civil war from 1991 to 2002 and is
one of the poorest countries in the world, is, like Angola, Afghanistan and
other war-torn regions, unable to offer sufficient health services to its
citizens, the report said.
Although there has been progress in many countries and the under-five
mortality rate worldwide has been reduced by 23 per cent since 1990, more needs
to be done. If the world is to reach the UN objective of decreasing the global
child mortality rate by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015, the current rate must
be cut in half within the next seven years, the report said.
Nearly all the children under five who die every year live in developing
countries, according the report. Twenty-eight of the 30 countries with the
highest child mortality rates are in sub-Saharan Africa.
Considerable progress has been made in a number of regions. In East Asia and
the Pacific, central and eastern Europe, the Commonwealth of Independent States,
Latin America and the Caribbean, child mortality has been cut roughly in half
since 1990, to below 30 deaths per 1,000 births, the report said.
Nearly one-third of the 50 least developed countries, including the Maldives,
East Timor, Nepal and Malawi, have reduced child mortality rates by at least 40
per cent since 1990.
Sierra
Leone leader in child mortality | The Australian
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