In 2006, for the first time in recent history, the total number of annual deaths among children under the age of five fell below 10 million, to 9.7 million. This represents a 60 per cent drop in the rate of child mortality since 1960.
However, there is no room for complacency. The loss of 9.7 million young lives each year is unacceptable, especially when many of these deaths are preventable. And despite progress, the world is not yet on track to achieve the Millennium Development Goal target of a two-thirds reduction in the rate of child mortality by 2015.
Widespread adoption of basic health interventions, including early and exclusive breastfeeding, immunization, vitamin A supplementation and the use of insecticide-treated mosquito nets to prevent malaria, are essential to scaling up progress, in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere.
More needs to be done to increase access to treatment and means of prevention, to address the devastating impact of pneumonia, diarrhoea, malaria, severe acute malnutrition and HIV.
The report can be downloaded in pdf format from Reliefweb.
No comments:
Post a Comment