The good news concerning child
mortality is that in the recent years it is almost half of what it was in 1990.
However, 18,000 children die a day and now 6 million under five die a year. The idea here was to show you the mass amount
of children who die every year and link it to specific reasons. Why do these
children die? According to the article they die from diseases such as, malaria,
diarrhea, prematurity, birth asphyxia and last but not least about 45 percent
of these under-five deaths occur due to malnutrition. I know this is quite the
contrast to go from obesity issues to basically problems of malnutrition and
lack of adequate diets. China has obesity problems but also the article states “China,
Democratic Republic of the Congo, India, Nigeria, and Pakistan. India (22%) and
Nigeria (13%) together account for more than one-third of all deaths of
children under the age of five.” Inequalities exist in many places in the world
for example, China as I discussed earlier has a growing epidemic of obesity,
but yet it’s listed as one of countries that account for child deaths under
five. In our text, we talked about the double divide “great gaps in wealth and
income remain between countries, but within almost any country one finds large,
and often growing gaps between rich and poor residents” (Sernau, 17).
The article states that lack of good health
care is the main reason most of these children die and a lot of them in the
first day of life. The millennium development
goals aim to reduce the number of child deaths to 2/3 by 2015 and this is not
feasible without some change in health care.
Sub-Saharan Africa is suffering with 98 deaths per 1000 births and most
children born there are 16 times more likely to die by their 5th
birthday. The Millennium development
goals seem to be very important here, because without these goals and help
these numbers would not be brought down as significantly. Although, inequality
is a huge social problem we are not seeing the end of it coming soon, making
opportunity for these countries is vital. A social problem exists when it affects
a large group of people and with the Millennium development goals they are
seeking to minimize these social problems and with the right help can make it
happen.
Sernau, Scott. Global Problems The Search for
Equity, Peace, and Sustianability. 3rd ed. Upper Saddle River: Pearson, n.d.
Print.
Emily Vestrat
9/19/2013
5:55 PM
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