Child Mortality – The good news and the bad news
The good news: child mortality has fallen in every single country over the past few decades. 4 million fewer children died before their fifth birthday in 2015 than in the year 2000.
The bad news: according to a detailed study published in The Lancet,
despite remarkable progress in the improvement of child survival between 1990 and 2015, the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 4 target of a two-thirds reduction of under-5 mortality rate (U5MR) was not achieved globally.
In other words, more than 60% of the world’s child deaths occur in just 10 countries…
According to the WEF, the world has made enormous strides in reducing child deaths, cutting the under-five mortality rate by more than half (53%) between 1990 and 2015. But there’s still much more to be done, and this achievement fell short of the Millennium Development Goal target of cutting the under-five mortality rate by two-thirds.
Estimates suggest that 5.9 million children under five died last year, including 2.7 million newborns. More than 60% of these deaths happened in just 10 countries in Africa and Asia: India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, China, Angola, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Tanzania.
Links
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Global, regional, and national causes of under-5 mortality in 2000–15: The Lancet
- World Economic Forum – Winning the war on Child Mortality
- Millennium Goals – United Nations
- Sustainable Development Goals – United Nations
