Child mortality among China's rural poor and its millions of migrants remains high despite overall improvements, state media quoted the WHO as saying yesterday.
The mortality rates are "still alarmingly and unacceptably high in rural areas and among migrant populations," Hans Anders Troedsson, the WHO's China representative was quoted as saying by the China Daily.
He was speaking at the launch of an annual report by the UN's Children's Fund (UNICEF) on the state of the world's children which said the problem was improving worldwide including in China.
However, the paper quoted a UNICEF China official as saying child mortality in remote and rural parts of the country remained two to five times higher than urban areas. No precise figures were immediately available from WHO or UNICEF on mortality rates for China's migrants or rural poor.
The UNICEF report said the death rate of children under five years was 24 per 1,000 live births in 2006, down from 45 per 1,000 in 1990. But the report also said about 415,000 children died in China each year, 4.3 percent of the world total.
About 10 percent of China's 1.3 billion population still live in poverty, estimates show.
An estimated 150 million people have become migrant workers, seeking jobs far from their homes and often taking their families with them. Their migrant status means they frequently have problems obtaining health care.
FEELING THREATENED: The first military commission under Kim Jong-un’s leadership to last longer than a day is a sign of a growing escalatory doctrine, an analyst said North Korea discussed assigning additional duties to its frontline army units at a key military meeting, state media said yesterday, suggesting that the country might deploy battlefield nuclear weapons targeting South Korea along the rivals’ tense border. The discussion comes as South Korean officials said North Korea has finished preparations for its first nuclear test in five years, as part of possible efforts to build a warhead to be mounted on short-range weapons capable of hitting targets in South Korea. During an ongoing meeting of the Central Military Commission of the ruling Workers’ Party on Wednesday, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and
TRADE TALK: Xiao Qian said that Australia had fired the ‘first shot’ in deteriorating trade relations with China, but improvements were possible if Canberra takes action China’s new ambassador to Australia chided protesters who heckled him yesterday during a speech about the future of relations between the two countries. Xiao Qian (肖千), who has only been in the role since January, had just begun his speech at the University of Technology Sydney when the first protesters interjected, calling for freedom for Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong. The ambassador was repeatedly interrupted by sign-wielding protesters, some criticizing China’s treatment of the Uighur people as well as the university for inviting Xiao to speak. “People who are coming again and again to interrupt the process, that’s not expression of freedom of
A former South Korean Navy SEAL turned YouTuber who risked jail time to leave Seoul and fight for Ukraine said it would have been a “crime” not to use his skills to help. Ken Rhee, a former special warfare officer, signed up at the Ukrainian embassy in Seoul the moment Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy asked for global volunteers and was fighting on the front lines near Kyiv by early March. To get there, he had to break South Korean law — Seoul banned its citizens from traveling to Ukraine, and Rhee, who was injured in a fall while leading a special operations
Indonesian President and G20 Chairman Joko Widodo yesterday set off to Europe where he said he plans to visit Russia and Ukraine and meet with the countries’ leaders to urge peace talks. Widodo departed for Germany to attend the G7 summit as a guest yesterday and today, after which he plans to go to Kyiv to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. “The mission is to ask ... President Zelenskiy to open a dialogue forum for peace, to build peace because the war has to be stopped,” Widodo told a news conference in Jakarta. The two leaders would also discuss the
RSS