Child deaths worldwide seem to have fallen faster than officials thought, as a new study estimates far fewer children are dying every year than previously guessed by the UN.
Using more data and an improved modeling technique, scientists predicted about 7.7 million children under 5 would die this year, down from nearly 12 million in 1990. The study was published online on Monday in the British medical journal, the Lancet.
The new estimate is substantially lower than UNICEF’s last estimate of child deaths from 2008. Then, the agency said about 8.7 million children were dying every year of preventable causes such as diarrhea, pneumonia and malaria.
“We’re quite a bit farther ahead than we thought,” said Christopher Murray, one of the paper’s authors and director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.
Murray and colleagues assessed information from 187 countries from 1970 to last year. They found child deaths dropped by about 2 percent every year, lower than the 4.4 percent needed to reach the UN’s target of reducing child deaths by two-thirds by 2015.
Murray said death rates were falling surprisingly fast in countries including Liberia and Niger, but that progress had stalled in rich countries like Britain and the US.
Where information was limited, researchers used modeling projections to estimate the number of deaths. The research was paid for by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
“We’re very excited because this study reinforces our belief that the scale-up of interventions such as [malaria] bed nets, vaccines and vitamin A [pills] are starting to show an impact,” said Mickey Chopra, UNICEF’s director of health.
UNICEF was not linked to the study.
He was particularly impressed with progress in countries like Niger and Malawi, where there hasn’t been much economic growth.
“Even while we wait for poverty levels to reduce, there is still a lot we can do to improve health,” he said.
But given the fluctuating figures common in global health, not everyone was swayed by the new research. There was also no evidence to show UN programs are responsible for the drop in child deaths.
Murray said the reduction could be because the AIDS epidemic peaked several years ago and is now hitting fewer kids.
William Aldis, a former senior WHO expert who has worked in Africa and Asia, said the numbers were not entirely reliable, given the uncertainty in the data from poor countries with patchy surveillance.
Mit Philips, a health analyst at the charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), said she was encouraged fewer children were dying, but much more still needed to be done.
“If you start off with a very high mortality rate, like some places in sub-Saharan Africa, even if you reduce it, it’s still very high,” she said.
Philips said improving health in poor countries required comprehensive health services, not just one-off campaigns handing out malaria bed nets or administering vaccines.
“Whatever the modeling shows, the picture on the ground can be quite different,” she said. “In some places in southern Africa, there is a lot less progress than you’d expect.”
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was