There was a bright spot in world health statistics revealed by the World Health Organization (WHO). It announced infant mortality is declining in the world.
It reports a 30% decrease in the amount of deaths in children aged five and under between 1990 and 2008. The number fell from 12.5 million to 8.8 million deaths.
The phenomenon is explained by the fact that the rate of underweight babies has decreased, vaccines are more readily available, the use of mosquito nets with insecticide provides excellent protection against malaria infection transmitted by mosquitoes, and 87% of the world’s population now has access to drinking water.
However, there is still room for improvement because there is still a 40% infant mortality rate. The vast majority of children die in their first month of life and, worse still, a large number of them die in the first week of life.
Dr. Ties Boerma is the director of the WHO Department of Health Statistics and Informatics. He says, "The challenge is also to assist countries in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of South-East Asia to get access to interventions such as insecticide-treated bed nets to prevent malaria, or prevent malnutrition. Undernutrition is the underlying cause of a third of child deaths."