New Delhi: More and more children are now living to see their fifth birthday as the child mortality rates have dropped by a third since 1990, the latest under-five mortality estimates released by Unicef said on Friday.
However, the tragedy of preventable child deaths continues as 22,000 children below five still die each day in a few countries and half of the deaths are in just five - India, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Pakistan and China. As many as 70 per cent of these deaths occur in the first year of the child's life.
Levels and Trends in Child Mortality 2010, issued by the UN Inter-Agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (IGME) and published in a special edition of British medical journal, The Lancet, revealed that from 89 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1990, the rate has dropped to 60 in 2009.
Genny - I.P.I.A"G.Marconi"
