Research and experience show that six million of the almost 11 million children who die each year could be saved by low-tech, evidence-based, cost-effective measures such as vaccines, antibiotics, micronutrient supplementation, insecticide-treated bed nets and improved family care and breastfeeding practices. Malnutrition and the lack of safe water and sanitation contribute to half of all these children’s deaths.īut disease isn’t inevitable, nor do children with these diseases need to die. Others result indirectly from marginalization, conflict and HIV/AIDS.
Some of the deaths occur from illnesses like measles, malaria or tetanus.
Two-thirds of deaths occur in just 10 countries.Īnd the majority are preventable. Among deaths in children, South-central Asia has the highest number of neonatal deaths, while sub-Saharan Africa has the highest rates. An Ethiopian child is 30 times more likely to die by his or her fifth birthday than a child in Western Europe. These deaths occur mainly in the developing world.
More than 70 per cent of almost 11 million child deaths every year are attributable to six causes: diarrhoea, malaria, neonatal infection, pneumonia, preterm delivery, or lack of oxygen at birth. To reduce child mortality by two-thirds, from 93 children of every 1,000 dying before age five in 1990 to 31 of every 1,000 in 2015.Ĭhild survival lies at the heart of everything UNICEF does.Ībout 29,000 children under the age of five – 21 each minute – die every day, mainly from preventable causes.