UN Report: newborn mortality likely to rise in near future
The latest report by UN agencies warned on Thursday that at current trends of child mortality, nearly 60 million children could die before their fifth birthday between 2017 and 2030, half being newborns, China’s Xinhua news agency reported.
The report, Levels and Trends in Child Mortality 2017, was jointly released by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Health Organisation, the World Bank, and the Population Division of UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
Its statistics show that for every day in 2016, some 15,000 children died before their fifth birthday, including 7,000 babies who died in the first 28 days of life.
Although the number of children who died before the age of five is at a new low, which stood about 5.6 million in 2016 compared with nearly 9.9 million in 2000, the proportion of under-five deaths in the newborn period has increased from 41 % to 46 %
Pneumonia and diarrhoea top the list of infectious diseases which claim the lives of millions of children under-five globally, while preterm birth complications and complications during labor or child birth caused 30 % of newborn deaths in 2016.
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