Child deaths alarmingly up in Iraq

9 May, 2007: The rate of child deaths has gone up alarmingly in some of the poorest countries of the world.

At the same time, it has also been found that a few other of the world’s poorest nations have made progress in the matter of child survival, fighting against all odds.

The rate at which young children perish worsened most disastrously over the past 15 years in Iraq – hit hard by both sanctions and war – and in Botswana, Zimbabwe and Swaziland, devastated by AIDS.

Egypt made the most progress since 1990 – and Iraq the least – in saving the lives of children under 5.

The information is contained in the report titled State of the World’s Mothers: Saving the Lives of Children Under 5, issued on May 8, 2007, by Save the Children, a global, independent, humanitarian organisation based in the United States.

The report includes the first-ever Child Survival Progress Rankings of 60 developing countries, which together account for 94% of all child deaths worldwide. The rankings indicate which countries are succeeding and which are failing to save the lives of children under the age of 5.

Among the 60 developing countries, where 94% of the child deaths occurred, 20 countries have either made no progress or have regressed, while 24 have cut death rates of children under 5 by at least 20%.

Iraq’s child mortality rate rose by a shocking 150% since 1990. About 122,000 Iraqi children died in 2005 before reaching their fifth birthday. More than half of those died were newborn babies in the first month of life.

The report by Save the Children has its bright side, too.

Egypt achieved a remarkable 68% fall in child deaths in the past 15 years.

Bangladesh considerably improved the chances that a child would survive by promoting family planning, a strategy that has enabled women to have fewer children, spacing births and strengthening their own health and that of their babies.

Nepal, despite a decade-long Maoist insurgency, has halved the death rate of children under age 5.

Malawi, with an appalling shortage of doctors and nurses, has made amazing gains by taking simple steps that require no professional skills, like, for example, distributing nets that protect children from malarial mosquitoes.

Over 10 million children under the age of 5 still die each year. That is almost 28,000 a day – and almost all of them in developing countries, according to Charles MacCormack, president and CEO of Save the Children.

The major findings in the report on child survival are:

The three biggest killers of children under 5 worldwide are newborn disorders, pneumonia and diarrhea.

Child and maternal death rates are highest in the poorest, most disadvantaged places. The highest rates are in Africa and South Asia.

The majority of child deaths occur in just 10 countries, many with large populations (such as China and India) and others with very high child mortality rates (such as Afghanistan, Angola and Congo).

AIDS remains one of the underlying causes affecting child mortality trends, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.

Among developing countries, Malawi, Bangladesh, Nepal, Tanzania and Madagascar are making great strides in child survival despite limited financial resources.

Among the 44 more-developed countries reviewed in the report, the United States ranked 26th. Children’s deaths in the industrialised world are most likely the result of injury suffered in traffic accidents, intentional harm, drowning, falling, fire and poisoning.