Unicef reports fall in child mortality

Global efforts to promote childhood immunisation, breast-feeding and anti-malaria measures have helped cut by nearly a quarter…

Global efforts to promote childhood immunisation, breast-feeding and anti-malaria measures have helped cut by nearly a quarter the death rate of children under five since 1990, Unicef has reported.

Unicef said 9.7 million children under the age of five died worldwide in 2006. Nearly half, 4.8 million, were in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Strong improvements in China and India helped drive a decline in worldwide child mortality, but children still died at very high rates in large regions of Africa south of the Sahara, United Nations Children's Fund figures showed.

Some of the top causes of death were pneumonia, premature births and birth defects, diarrhoea, malaria, Aids and measles.

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"There's overall progress in reducing child mortality, but clearly 9.7 million children dying every year is completely and totally unacceptable," Unicef executive director Ann Veneman said.

Worldwide, the death rate for children under age five was 72 per 1,000 live births in 2006.

The 2006 rate is a 23 per cent drop from 1990, when 93 per 1,000 children died before the age of five. It is a 61 per cent decrease from the rate of 184 per 1,000 in 1960, when 20 million young children died.