Some five million children under the age of five died in 2021 due to a lack of quality health care, the UN announced on Tuesday, regretting that survival continues to depend on where they are born.
“Many of these deaths could have been prevented through equitable access to quality maternal, newborn and child health care,” considered the United Nations Inter-Agency Group for Infant Mortality Estimation (UN IGME), responsible for the report where the estimates were made known. .
The group also notes, in a separate report also released today, that 1.9 million babies were stillborn that year due to lack of primary care.
“Every day, many parents face the trauma of losing their children, sometimes even before their first breath,” lamented the director of the UNICEF (United Nations Fund for Human Development) Data Analysis, Planning and Monitoring Division. Childhood), Vidhya Ganesh, for whom “this widespread and preventable tragedy cannot be considered inevitable”.
Improving these numbers “is possible if there is strong political will and investment in equitable access to primary health care for all women and children,” he defended.
Despite the fact that the figures are very high, the two reports show a positive evolution in all age groups with respect to the year 2000, proving that the risk of death is currently much lower.
The global infant mortality rate in the first five years of life has fallen by 50% since the beginning of the century, while the stillbirth rate has decreased by 35%, which, according to the UN, is explained by the existence of more investments in primary systems dedicated to women, children and youth.
However, the improvements recorded in the first decade of the century have slowed significantly since 2010, with 54 countries not reaching the Sustainable Development Goals (the so-called 2030 Agenda, which comprises 17 main Goals) for under-five mortality.
Established in 2015 by the United Nations General Assembly, these global goals define that the global maternal mortality rate must be reduced, by 2030, to less than 70 deaths per 100,000 births.
The goal is also to end preventable deaths of newborns and children under five years of age and to reduce, in all countries, neonatal mortality to no more than 12 per 1,000 births and under-five mortality to 25 per 1,000.
“If rapid measures are not taken to improve health services, almost 59 million children and young people will die before 2030 and almost 16 million babies will be stillborn,” warn the agencies that are part of this UN group.
“It is extremely unfair that a child’s chances of survival are conditioned by the place where he is born and that there are such great inequalities in access to health services,” lamented the director of the Maternal, Newborn, Child, and Adolescent Health Service. and Aging of the World Health Organization (WHO), Anshu Banerjee.
“Any child, wherever they are, needs a strong primary health care system that meets their needs and those of their families so that, wherever they are born, they have the best start and hope for the future,” he said. .
UN IGME was created in 2004 to share data on infant mortality, improve estimation methods, report on the evolution of child survival targets, and build country capacities.
The group is led by UNICEF and includes WHO, the World Bank Group and the Population Division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
Source: TSF
