The UN has issued some encouraging news, reporting that child mortality rates have dropped by 53 percent in the last 25 years. Though the trend is moving in the right direction, advocates say there is still much work to be done, as 16,000 young children still die every day around the world. UNICEF’s deputy director said in a statement,
The far too large number of children still dying from preventable causes before their 5th birthday—and indeed within their first month of life—should impel us to redouble our efforts to do what we know needs to be done. We cannot continue to fail them.
Some of the biggest areas of need are helping infants and newborns in impoverished areas of Africa and Southern Asia, where mortality rates for children are the highest. The fall in child deaths—down to 5.9 million in 2015, compared to 12.7 in 1990—is still under the goal set by U.N. officials of the cutting the overall mortality by two-thirds.
