Poverty leads 10 million children to an early grave
New estimates add weight to the urgency of Africa's needs
James Meikle, health correspondent
Friday March 25, 2005
The Guardian
About 10.6m children under five die each year, most from preventable causes, World Health Organisation advisers estimate.Almost four in 10 die within 28 days of birth and more than four in 10 deaths are in southern and western Africa.
The figures, published soon after Tony Blair's Commission for Africa called for huge injections of aid to improve health on the continent, confirm the size of the global public health disaster international bodies such as the G8, the WHO and Unicef are trying to tackle.
Scientists believe their latest estimates, based on an analysis of death registrations, long-term research and improved models for calculating mortality rates between 2000 and 2003, are the most accurate yet.
The deaths are mainly from pneumonia (19%), diarrhoea (17%), malaria (8%), measles (4%), HIV/Aids (3%) and injuries (3%). Premature birth (28%), sepsis or pneumonia (26%), and asphyxia (23%) are the most common causes of very early death.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1445405,00.html