|
|
|
SA in danger of not reducing child mortality
Yugendree Naidoo, IOL
2008-07-16
Health experts have warned that South Africa's chances of meeting United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) related to child mortality are becoming increasingly slim.
The warning is the latest red
light on child mortality after a Medical Research Council study entitled
Every Death Counts reported in May that 75 000 children died every
year in South Africa before their fifth birthday. The United Nations children's
agency, Unicef, has also warned that rising food prices could worsen child
mortality. In a June paper in Critical Health Perspectives, a monthly
publication produced by the People's Health Movement, a coalition of grassroots
organisations involved in healthcare, paediatricians noted that in contrast to
most countries, including many in Africa, the under-five mortality rate in
South Africa
was rising rather than declining. ...75 000 children died every year in South
Africa before their fifth birthday In the paper entitled Millennium
Development Goals: Progress & Prospects for Meeting Child Survival Targets
in South Africa.
The authors said that, based on
current trends and unless urgent measures were taken to address the main causes
of death for children under five years old, South Africa had little hope of
reaching the fourth MDG goal. This, one of eight goals relating to the reduction
of global poverty between 1990 and 2015, stipulates that South Africa needs to
achieve an under-five mortality rate of 20 deaths per 1 000 children by 2015. At
present, according to Unicef's State of the World's Children 2008
report, the figure was 76 deaths per 1 000 children in 2006. The authors of the
paper include Professor David Sanders from the University of the
Western Cape
's
School
of
Public Health
, as well as Professor Brian Eley and Professor George Swingler of the Red Cross
Children's Hospital. They stated that the biggest killers of small children
remain unchanged: HIV and AIDS, diarrhoea, acute respiratory infections, low
birth weight and malnutrition. Household food insecurity, inadequate childcare,
poor health and environmental services and inadequate diets underpinned frequent
illness among children, they said.
|
News
