United Nations predicts 69M preventable child deaths by 2030

UNICEF is urging countries to develop national plans so they can meet the ambitious targets they have committed to in the 2030 sustainable development agenda.

“Eighty per cent of preventable deaths now occur in south Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, with nearly half occurring in India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Congo and Ethiopia”, Mr Chaiban said.

Though India’s under-five mortality rate – deaths per 1,000 live births – has improved to 48 from 126 deaths in 1990, it still has a lot of catching up to do.

Inequality existed in every country, he said, and globally children in the poorest 20% of the population were twice as likely to die before the age of five than those in the richest 20%.

“Taken together”, the report reads, “these deprivations effectively cut childhood short, robbing millions of children of the very things that define what it is to be a child: play, laughter, growth and learning”. Globally about 124 million children today do not go to primary- and lower-secondary school, and nearly 2 in 5 who do finish primary school have not learned how to read, write or do simple arithmetic. “The challenge really is how do we use this new framing, the “no one left behind” language.to galvanize the movement that can push governments to deliver”.

Again, sub-Saharan Africa fares badly with the report forecasting that by 2030 the region will account for more than half of the 60 million children of primary school age who are not in school.

The State of the World’s Children, UNICEF’s annual report paints a stark picture of what is in store for the world’s poorest children if governments, donors, businesses and worldwide organizations do not accelerate efforts to address their needs.

On Tuesday, UNICEF released a report – State of the World’s Children 2016 – the 172-page report reflected on the vulnerability of the futures of millions of disadvantaged children cum the future of their societies.

The report pointed to the evidence that investing in the most vulnerable children can yield immediate and long-term benefits. “If all mothers achieved secondary education, there would be 1.3 million fewer annual deaths of children under age 5 in South Asia”, it said.

On average, each year spent on education increases a child’s adult earnings by approximately 10 percent.

Likewise, the poorest newborns are 3.7 times less likely attended by skilled birth-attendant compared to the richest children in Nepal, according to the report.

Among UNICEF’s recommendations to tackle the crisis are increased investment in vaccines, insecticide-treated mosquito nets, and nutritional supplements for the most excluded children and communities; cash transfers that enable children to stay in school longer; and “an integrated approach to development and humanitarian action” that recognizes the overlapping nature of global crises.

By 2030, the report estimates that $340bn a year will be needed to fund education to the secondary level in low-income areas. It estimated that attaining the 2030 goal in universal education would cost $340 billion each year.