Nearly 50 million lives saved since 2000; millions more can be saved by 2030: UNICEF report
The rate of decline in mortality among the world’s youngest children has more than doubled over a generation, and an
additional 38 million lives could be saved by 2030 if progress accelerates further, in line with the Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs) world leaders are set to approve later this month.
Data from UNICEF’s “A Promise Renewed: 2015 Progress Report” show that since 2000, when governments committed to achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the lives of 48
million children under the age of five have been saved. This remarkable progress is the result of sustained action by
leaders – to make saving children’s lives a policy and a political priority, to improve and use data about child
survival, and to scale up proven interventions.
The number of children who die from mostly preventable causes before they turn five now stands at 5.9 million a year – a
53 per cent drop since 1990. At 3.9 percent the global annual rate of reduction of under-five mortality between 2000 and
2015 was more than twice as high as what it was in the 1990s.
Some of the world’s poorest countries have demonstrated that substantial reductions in child mortality can be achieved
despite formidable obstacles:
- 24 out of 81 low- and lower-middle income countries, including Cambodia, Ethiopia, Bangladesh and Uganda, achieved the
MDG of reducing the under-five mortality rate by two-thirds or more.[1]
- Between 2000 and 2015, twenty-one sub-Saharan African countries reversed a rising mortality trend or at least tripled
their pace of progress compared to the 1990s.
“Saving the lives of millions of children in urban and rural settings, in wealthy and poor countries, is one of the
first great achievements of the new millennium -- and one of the biggest challenges of the next 15 years is to further
accelerate this progress” said UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Yoka Brandt. “The data tell us that millions of children
do not have to die -- if we focus greater effort on reaching every child.”
Simple, high-impact, cost effective solutions that contributed to this dramatic reduction of under-five deaths include
skilled antenatal, delivery and postnatal care; breastfeeding; immunization; insecticide-treated mosquito nets; improved
water and sanitation; oral rehydration therapy for diarrhoea; antibiotics for pneumonia; nutritional supplements and
therapeutic foods.
Despite this impressive progress, the world has not met the MDG target of reducing under-five mortality by two-thirds.
Between 1990 and the end of 2015, an estimated 236 million children will have died from mostly preventable causes before
turning five. Today, leading causes of under-five deaths include prematurity; pneumonia; complications during labour and
delivery; diarrhoea; and malaria. Under-nutrition contributes to nearly half of all under-five deaths.
The SDGs challenge countries to significantly increase their efforts to bring rates of under-five mortality down to 25
deaths (or fewer) per 1,000 live births by 2030. By picking up the pace, especially in countries that are lagging, the
world stands to save the lives of 38 million more children under the age of five.
ENDS