Prof Robert
E Black MD a 
,
Prof Simon
Cousens MA b,
Hope
L Johnson PhD a, Joy
E Lawn PhD c,
Prof Igor
Rudan MD d, Diego
G Bassani PhD e, Prof Prabhat
Jha MD e,
Prof Harry
Campbell MD d,
Christa
Fischer Walker PhD a,
Richard
Cibulskis PhD
WUNRN
12
May 2010
CHILD MORTALITY IN 2008: A
SYSTEMATIC ANALYSIS
Prof Robert
E Black MD a ,
Prof Simon
Cousens MA b,
Hope
L Johnson PhD a, Joy
E Lawn PhD c,
Prof Igor
Rudan MD d, Diego
G Bassani PhD e, Prof Prabhat
Jha MD e,
Prof Harry
Campbell MD d,
Christa
Fischer Walker PhD a,
Richard
Cibulskis PhD
ALMOST 1/2
DEATHS OF CHILDREN UNDER 5 ARE IN 5 COUNTRIES
May
11, 2010 (HealthDay News)
- Infectious diseases
such as pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria
and blood poisoning account for more than two-thirds of the 8.8 million annual
deaths in kids under 5 years of age worldwide, a new report shows.
Other leading causes of death for children include birth complications, lack of oxygen during birth and congenital defects.
The authors of the report found that infectious diseases caused 5.97 million deaths among kids under age 5 in 2008. Pneumonia (18 percent), diarrhea (15 percent) and malaria (8 percent) accounted for the highest numbers. About 40 percent of the deaths were in infants aged no more than 27 days.
Almost half of these deaths occurred in just five countries -- China, Nigeria, India, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Pakistan.
Africa (4.2 million) and Southeast Asia (2.39 million) accounted for the highest numbers of deaths.
Countries with high average incomes, for example, the United States, were more likely to have a higher rate of deaths caused by injuries.
There is some good news: While there are more kids under the age of 5 in the world, the number of deaths among them has fallen from 10.6 million per year from 2000-2003 to 8.8 million in 2008, the authors noted.
The report, written by Robert E. Black of the department of international health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore and colleagues on behalf of the Child Health Epidemiology Reference Group of the World Health Organization and UNICEF, was released online May 11 in advance of publication in an upcoming print issue of The Lancet.
The authors wrote: "We challenge countries and programs to advance the quality and consistency of data on causes of death, and, most importantly to use such data in the design of programs to achieve maximum progress in the crucial few years before [The Millennium Development Goal target of] 2015."
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