Child mortality has halved since
1990: UN
With
global and national efforts to end preventable deaths of children under five
years of age, child mortality worldwide has been on decline by half since 1990,
a UN report said on Friday.
According
to the ’2013 Progress Report on Committing to Child Survival: A Promise
Renewed’, last year approximately 6.6 million children, or 18,000 children per
day, died before reaching their fifth birthday, Xinhua reported.
This is
roughly half the number of under-fives who died in 1990, when more than 12
million children died, according to the report released by the United Nations
Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Health Organisation (WHO), the World Bank
Group and the United Nations Department of Economic and Social
Affairs/Population Division.
‘This
trend is a positive one. Millions of lives have been saved,’ said Anthony Lake,
UNICEF executive director.
‘And we
can do still better. Most of these deaths can be prevented, using simple steps
that many countries have already put in place — what we need is a greater sense
of urgency.’
The report
said the reductions are attributed to more effective and affordable treatments,
improvements in mothers’ nutrition and education, innovations in bringing
critical services to poor and excluded people and sustained political
commitment.
Some of
the world’s poorest countries have made the strongest gains in child survival
since 1990, the report said.
A few
high-mortality, low-income countries — Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Liberia, Malawi,
Nepal, Timor Leste and Tanzania — have already reduced their under-five
mortality rates by two-thirds or more since 1990, according to the figures in
the report.
East Asia
and Asia Pacific leads the global trend in reductions in child mortality. Since
1990, the region has reduced its under-five mortality by more than 60
percent.
Unless
progress is sped up, however, it will take until 2028 before the world meets
the target set by the Millennium Development Goal (MDGs) to have the overall
child mortality reduced by two-thirds by 2015, said the report.
It listed
pneumonia, diarrhoea, and malaria as the leading causes of child deaths
globally, claiming the lives of around 6,000 children under five each day.
Undernutrition is also blamed for almost half of all under-five deaths.
Source: http://health.india.com
16.09.2013
India’s
Poonam Khetrapal Singh regional director of WHO’s southeast Asian region
India’s Poonam Khetrapal Singh was elected the
regional director of the WHO’s southeast Asian region on Thursday.
An Indian has regained the post after a gap of
44 years. The post was last occupied by an Indian in 1968.
The present incumbent Samlee Plianbangchang is
from Thailand and has served for 10 years now.
Khetrapal Singh was elected here during the
ongoing meeting of the health ministers of the southeast Asian countries, an
official release said.
The election of the regional director is an
opportunity to strengthen India’s commitment to perform its role in health and
development with the WHO as a key partner, Health and Family Welfare Minister
Ghulam Nabi Azad said.
He said: “Poonam Khetrapal Singh is an acknowledged
public health specialist and administrator with vast experience and recognition
in the UN system. She would be able to contribute to regional as well as global
initiatives.”
Khetrapal Singh has experience at global level
in the WHO as executive director sustainable development and healthy
environments and member of the cabinet of the director general in Geneva.
At the national level she has been the
advisor, international health, in the health ministry.
The southeast Asian region of the WHO comprises
of 11 countries – India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand,
Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Timor Leste and Korea.
Source: http://health.india.com
16.09.2013
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