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15178
Thu, 08/07/2008 - 11:29
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https://oananews.org//node/15178
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India key to achieving world goal on reducing child mortality: UNICEF
NEW DELHI, Aug. 6 Kyodo - India, where millions of children still die every year, holds the key to global achievement of targets set by the world community in 2000 for reducing child and maternal mortality and combating disease, according to a report on child survival released by the U.N. Children's Fund this week.
In the report, UNICEF warned that global efforts to reach the
health-related Millennium Development Goals by 2015 will fail unless
India makes major strides in the areas of health, nutrition, water
and sanitation, education, gender equality and child protection.
''More than for any other single nation, India's progress on child survival is pivotal to meeting the health-related MDGs,'' it said in its report titled ''State of Asia-Pacific's Children 2008.''
Despite having reduced its mortality rate for children under 5 by
60 percent between 1970 and 2006, India still had 2.1 million
under-5 deaths in 2006, accounting for a fifth of under-5 deaths
reported worldwide that year, the U.N. agency said.
It said India has 127 million under-5 children among its 1.2 billion people, accounting for 20 percent of the world's under-5 population.
UNICEF acknowledged that India has made great strides in reducing child deaths since 1960, when its under-5 mortality rate stood at 236 per 1,000 live births.
By 2006, the latest year for which firm estimates are available, the rate had fallen by roughly two-thirds to 76 per 1,000 live births, and since 1990 it has been further reduced by around a third.
''Despite these gains, at its current rate of progress, India is unlikely to meet the targets of the Millennium Development Goals related to enhancing nutrition, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health and ensuring environmental sustainability through improved sanitation facilities,'' UNICEF said.
''This is due, in no small part, to the continued lack of adequate and comprehensive primary health-care services and facilities, and to under nutrition,'' it said.
The report said that more than 50 percent of under-5 deaths in India are associated with undernutrition and anemia, while another 30
percent are caused by pneumonia.
For the world to achieve the health-related Millennium Development Goals, China, with 415,000 child deaths in 2006, also needs to make significant strides to regain early progress it made in child survival, UNICEF said in the report.
The world's most populous nation managed to reduce its under-5 mortality rate by 80 percent between 1970 and 2006, from 118 per 1,000 live births to 24 per 1,000 live births.
However, the drop started to level off in the 1990s ''and the rate of reduction has slowed significantly and even stalled in some parts of the country,'' it said.
Together, India and China accounted for a third of the 9.7 million children who died worldwide died before their fifth birthday in 2006, the report said.
One of the eight Millennium Development Goals that United Nations member states agreed in 2000 to try to achieve by 2015 is to reduce the world' under-5 mortality rate by two-thirds, starting from 1990.
But according to UNICEF, only 35 countries are on track to achieve the target within that 25-year period -- most of them in Europe and in Latin America and the Caribbean.
In the report, UNICEF warned that global efforts to reach the
health-related Millennium Development Goals by 2015 will fail unless
India makes major strides in the areas of health, nutrition, water
and sanitation, education, gender equality and child protection.
''More than for any other single nation, India's progress on child survival is pivotal to meeting the health-related MDGs,'' it said in its report titled ''State of Asia-Pacific's Children 2008.''
Despite having reduced its mortality rate for children under 5 by
60 percent between 1970 and 2006, India still had 2.1 million
under-5 deaths in 2006, accounting for a fifth of under-5 deaths
reported worldwide that year, the U.N. agency said.
It said India has 127 million under-5 children among its 1.2 billion people, accounting for 20 percent of the world's under-5 population.
UNICEF acknowledged that India has made great strides in reducing child deaths since 1960, when its under-5 mortality rate stood at 236 per 1,000 live births.
By 2006, the latest year for which firm estimates are available, the rate had fallen by roughly two-thirds to 76 per 1,000 live births, and since 1990 it has been further reduced by around a third.
''Despite these gains, at its current rate of progress, India is unlikely to meet the targets of the Millennium Development Goals related to enhancing nutrition, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health and ensuring environmental sustainability through improved sanitation facilities,'' UNICEF said.
''This is due, in no small part, to the continued lack of adequate and comprehensive primary health-care services and facilities, and to under nutrition,'' it said.
The report said that more than 50 percent of under-5 deaths in India are associated with undernutrition and anemia, while another 30
percent are caused by pneumonia.
For the world to achieve the health-related Millennium Development Goals, China, with 415,000 child deaths in 2006, also needs to make significant strides to regain early progress it made in child survival, UNICEF said in the report.
The world's most populous nation managed to reduce its under-5 mortality rate by 80 percent between 1970 and 2006, from 118 per 1,000 live births to 24 per 1,000 live births.
However, the drop started to level off in the 1990s ''and the rate of reduction has slowed significantly and even stalled in some parts of the country,'' it said.
Together, India and China accounted for a third of the 9.7 million children who died worldwide died before their fifth birthday in 2006, the report said.
One of the eight Millennium Development Goals that United Nations member states agreed in 2000 to try to achieve by 2015 is to reduce the world' under-5 mortality rate by two-thirds, starting from 1990.
But according to UNICEF, only 35 countries are on track to achieve the target within that 25-year period -- most of them in Europe and in Latin America and the Caribbean.
