LONDON – More than 9 million children all over the world, died before celebrating their fifth birthday in 2007, which is slightly, down in number from 2006, but a vast gap still remains between rich and poor countries, especially in Africa, UNICEF said.

Efforts to support breastfeeding, immunizations and eradication of malaria, have helped to cut down child death rate from 9.7 million to 9.2 in 2007 which was 12.7 million in 1990, the figures from the United Nations Children’s Fund showed.

“Since 1960, the global under-five mortality rate has declined more than 60 percent, and the new data shows the downward trend continues,” UNICEF Executive Director Ann Veneman said.

Situation is improving in Latin America and the Caribbean, Central and Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union and in parts of Asia where trend is moving downward, but deaths still high in sub-Saharan Africa where one out of seven children dies before age 5.

AIDS is still a chief killer of children in sub-Saharan Africa, though countries like Eritrea, Malawi, Mozambique, Niger and Ethiopia have made considerable progress in reducing mortality rates, UNICEF said.

“Sub-Saharan Africa now accounts for almost half of the 9.2 million deaths among children in this age group annually,” according to the UNICEF report.
World’s worst under-five mortality rate noted in Sierra Leone, 262 out of every 1,000 children dying before their fifth birthday. The rate in developed nations was 6 per 1,000.

“Recent data also indicate encouraging developments in many of the basic health interventions, such as early and exclusive breast feeding, measles immunization, Vitamin A supplementation, the use of insecticide-treated nets to prevent malaria, and prevention and treatment of AIDS,” Veneman said.

“These interventions are expected to result in further declines in child mortality over the coming years.”

This article is the property of http://www.HealthHeap.com
Copying and publishing any article from our site is strictly NOT allowed