Children are dying like flies

29 June 2016 - 09:14 By © BDlive

By 2030 about 69 million children under the age of five will die from mostly preventable causes, 167million children will live in poverty and 750million women will have been married as children, says Unicef's 2016 report, The State of the World's Children.The annual report was released yesterday.It ranks South Africa 58th in the world for child mortality under the age of five. Unicef estimates that 2.9 million children died in sub-Saharan Africa last year.It paints a bleak fate for the world's poorest children if governments, donors, businesses and international organisations do not speed up efforts to address needs.Unicef executive director Anthony Lake said countries had a choice to invest in children or allow the world to become more unequal and divided. But the good news is that globally the number of children dying under the age of five has more than halved since 1990.In South Africa the mortality rate has fallen from 60 deaths per 1000 babies born in 1990 to 41 in 2015. Infant mortality under the age of one has also fallen. In 1990 the number stood at 47 per 1000 born, compared with 34 in 2015. The report found that 11 in every 1,000 babies born in the country die in the first 28 days of life. ..

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