UNITED NATIONS (NNN-UNI) -- The pace of childhood death rates has declined sharply in recent decades - with an estimated 6.9 million children dying before their fifth birthday last year, compared to around 12 million in 1990 and India figured among the nations that still suffer acutely.
Sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia still account for more than 80 per cent of global under-five deaths. Their disparity with other regions is becoming more marked as regions such as Eastern Asia and Northern Africa have cut child deaths by more than two-thirds since 1990, according to a new UN report.
Half of all under-five deaths occurred in five countries: India, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Pakistan and China, according to the report, which also found that India and Nigeria account for more than a third of all under-five deaths worldwide.
The report released here Friday asked for greater strides to meet international goals in order to save infants and young children.
"Proven solutions need to be expanded to accelerate progress on child survival faster and farther," said the report of the UN Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation.
Formed in 2004, the group is made up of the UN Children's Fund, the World Health Organization, the Population Division of the UN Department of Development and Social Affairs (DESA) and the World Bank.
Its activities include sharing data on child mortality and improving methods for child mortality estimation reporting on progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals, a set of eight goals agreed upon by world leaders in 2000 to slash extreme poverty and other global ills.
The group said gains in child survival, though significant, are still insufficient to achieve the fourth MDG, which calls for reducing the global under-five mortality by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015.
Only six of the world's ten regions are on track to reach the target. Worldwide, an estimated 19,000 children died every day in 2011, with around 40 per cent in the first month of life and most from preventable causes.
The report calls for systematic action to reduce neonatal mortality. "Highly cost-effective interventions are feasible even at the community level," said the group, which advocates expanding preventative and curative interventions that target the main causes of infant mortality.
Globally, it noted, the leading causes of death among children under five are pneumonia, pre-term birth complications, diarrhoea, complications during birth and malaria.
The report said rates of child mortality have fallen in all regions of the world in the last two decades - down by at least 50 per cent in Eastern Asia, Northern Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Southeastern Asia and Western Asia. -- NNN-UNI
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