Reducing Child Mortality Rates (One of Millennium Goals)

Reducing Child Mortality Rates (One of Millennium Goals)

Introduction

The infant mortality rate expresses the number of children in a particular location that die before reaching 1 year of age per thousand live births. This is an indicator of the quality of health services, sanitation and education. Among the main causes of infant mortality are the lack of assistance and education to pregnant women, lack of medical care, disability hospital care, malnutrition, environmental sanitation services, among others. The lack of sanitation causes contamination of water and food, can trigger diseases such as hepatitis A, malaria, yellow fever, cholera, diarrhea, etc. (www.who.int).

Discussion

According to the recent estimates, there have been a decrease in the child mortality as advancements are made to improve the health conditions of children. The mortality rate has decreased by 35 recents in the age bracket of children under five, from 88 deaths for every 1,000 live births in 1990 to 57 in 2010. All districts, with the exception of Sub-Saharan Africa, Caucasus and Central Asia, Southern Asia and Oceania, have seen decreases of no less than 50 percent. In spite of population growth, the amount of deaths in children under five worldwide declined from 12 million in 1990 to 7.6 million in 2010, which makes as practically 12,000 fewer child deaths every day. The rate of decrease in under five mortality has quickened from 1.9 percent a year over 1990-2000 to 2.5 percent a year over 2000-2010 (www.who.int).

The decline in child mortality in Africa must be understood in the context of demographic transition, necessary (but not sufficient) for the development of a region. The demographic transition is a consensus phases: starting with high rates of birth and death comes a time when the latter begins to decrease for reasons then comment. After a period of time, birth rates also decrease. This process continues until they become a steady growth to a level lower than the initial necessarily (unstats.un.org).

Most Western societies have passed this transition and are now 'mature'. Developing countries and peripheral regions are at different stages of the process. In this case, Africa as a whole is in an early stage. The data leave no doubt: several African countries have reduced child mortality rates to less than half in the past 20 years, such as Eritrea, Madagascar, Niger and Tanzania. Most African countries have started late demographic transition, but show a higher rate than many other regions in the past. You may not get to meet the Millennium Development Goal 4 (MDG 4) of reducing child mortality by two thirds by 2015 compared to 1990 levels [1], but the results are astounding to many analysts (unstats.un.org).

Reducing child mortality

Infant mortality is measured as the number of children under 5 who die per 1,000 births. In Africa, the decline has occurred in all regions, Christian or Muslim countries, large and small, from Ethiopia in the east to Senegal and Nigeria in the west, to Kenya and Rwanda. This decline is much faster than ...