Blog #3 (Health/Disease)

“Big drop in children under five dying, says UN report.”

Amber Kocher

According to the article, the number of children under the age of five who die annually has dropped.  It was 12 million deaths in 1990, and it dropped to 7.6 million last year.  A report was done by Unicef and the World Health Organization to find out the cause.  Some of the reasons for the change are underdeveloped countries as well as poverty ridden countries are getting better access to health care and early immunization.  Clean water and nutrition for mothers and infants is also a huge reason.  The UN still believes that a lot more needs to be done to reach the goals that the UN has for obliterating child mortality.  Some of the countries that improved were Sierra Leone, in which their government offered free health care for child and parents.  Also Malawi, Liberia, Niger, and some other countries in Africa and Asia improved greatly.  The majority of the deaths cam from India, China, Pakistan, Nigeria, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.  A statistic shows that within the first 5 years of life, “one in 143 children die before they reach the age of five in developed countries.  That compares to the one in 8 that die in sub-Saharan Africa.” 

This article is a great example of an existing issue showing progress, and it’s continuing to move in the right direction.  With the efforts of other countries, and just thing within these developing countries changing, they were able to drop the infant mortality rate by almost half over the last 10 years.  Infant mortality for reasons that are completely preventable is an issue that needs immediate attention, and it’s starting to get some.  With organizations like the UN bringing attention to this and other countries and organizations getting involved to give people basic rights, like clean water, I can definitely see this issue becoming non-existent in the future.  As the article and the UN said, there is still a long way to go, but the more people that are aware and the more people that get involved, the better.  Even the governments of these developing countries are seeing the issues and trying to change, as Sierra Leone did.  An infant dying because it and its mother didn’t have access to immunizations, health care, or clean water is something almost completely unheard of and definitely would not go unnoticed in the US, or in countries in Europe.  So why should it continue anywhere else?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-14930778