Global Health Council | Child Health -

your location : home > key issues > child health > child mortality	Share

Child Health

  Child Mortality
     Causes of Deaths
     Where Deaths Occur
  Impact of Disease
  Maternal & Child Health
  Adolescent Health
  Interventions in Health
  Measuring Progress
  Needs & Costs
  What You Can Do
     Council Links
     Other Links

Child Mortality

Causes of Death Next >>

An estimated 9.2 million children under the age of five will die this year – nearly 26,000 per day or 18 every minute.¹ This is greater than the annual number of deaths from AIDS (2 million), malaria (900,000), and tuberculosis (1.5 million) combined.² Neonatal disorders, pneumonia and diarrhea are the major causes of under-five mortality.

Globally, 80 percent of all child deaths are due to only a handful of causes: neonatal causes, pneumonia, diarrhea, and malaria.³ Pneumonia or sepsis, pre-term delivery, and asphyxia at birth are the leading causes of neonatal deaths. Malnutrition is responsible for over a third of child deaths.

Major Causes of Child Deaths & Number of Child Deaths per Year²

Percent of Child Mortality, by Source^{1, 2}

Cause of Death	State of the World’s Children 2008 Data from 2000-2003	Global Burden of Disease 2004 – Update 2008 Data from 2004
Neonatal causes*	37	37
Acute respiratory infections/Pneumonia	19	17
Diarrheal diseases	17	16
Malaria	8	7
Measles**	4	4
Injuries	3	4
HIV/AIDS	3	2
Other	10	13

The impact of disease varies greatly by region. For example, 90 percent of all child deaths due to malaria occur in Africa, and malaria causes 18 percent of child deaths in sub-Saharan Africa.^{7, 8} Yet, malaria causes less than 1 percent of child deaths in Southeast Asia.

Globally, child mortality has declined by about 2 percent per year for the past 25 years.⁹

Between 1960 and 1990, the global child mortality rate (i.e., the number of deaths of children under age five years per 1,000 live births) was reduced by half, from 191 to 95 per 1,000.
The 1990 World Summit for Children set a goal of reducing childhood mortality by another one-third by the year 2000. That goal was not achieved. By 2000, the global death rate had fallen to 84 per 1,000 – about a 10 percent drop from 1990.
In 2000, the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) for child survival pledged countries to reduce their 1990 child mortality rates by 2/3 by 2015. The progress countries have made toward reaching their goals has been mixed, with a few countries on-track toward achieving the target, others having little or no success, and some countries actually losing ground.¹⁰
Although child mortality has been decreasing over the past 40 years, the global child mortality rate is still more than 12 times higher than the rate for industrialized countries (76 per 1,000 live births versus six per 1,000 live births, respectively). In many developing countries, it is 25 to 30 times or more as high. Substantial work is needed to improve child survival in developing countries.

top

Trends in Global Child Mortality Rate, 1960 – 2005¹¹

Causes of Death Next >>

¹	UNICEF. The state of the world's children. 2007 [cited April 23, 2007]; Available from: http://www.unicef.org/publications/index_36587.html.
²	Lawn JE, Cousens S, Darmstadt GL, et al. 1 year after The Lancet Neonatal Survival Series – was the call for action heard? Lancet 2006; 367:1541-7.
³	World Health Organization. WHO global burden of disease (GBD) 2002 estimates (revised); 2004. Available from: www.who.int/healthinfo/bodestimates/en.
⁴	World Health Organization. Tuberculosis factsheet no. 104. 2006 [cited June 13, 2007] Available from: www.who.int/mediacentre/en.
⁵	Breman J, Alilio M, Mills A. Conquering the intolerable burden of malaria: what's new, what's needed: a summary. American Journal of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene 2004;71:1-15.
⁶	Bryce J, Boschi-Pinto C, Shibuya K, Black RE, WHO Child Health Epidemiology Reference Group. WHO estimates the causes of death in children. Lancet 2005;365(9465):1147-52.
⁷	World Health Organization. The world health report 2005: make every mother and child count. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2005. www.who.int/whr/2005/en/.
⁸	Black RE, Morris SS, Bryce J. Where and why are 10 million children dying every year? Lancet 2003, 361:2226-34.
⁹	Ahmad OB, Lopez AD, Inoue M. The decline in child mortality: A reappraisal. Bulletin of the World Health Organization 2000;78:1175-91.
¹⁰	Bryce J, Terreri N, Victora CG, et al. Countdown to 2015: tracking intervention coverage for child survival. Lancet 2006;368:1067-76. 2006.
¹¹	UNICEF. Statistics: Under 5 Mortality Rate. [cited May 11, 2007]; Available from: www.childinfo.org/areas/childmortality/u5data.php.

top