Poverty is not necessarily the main cause of a high level of infant mortality rate, rather than a disproportionate income distribution leads to a high rate of death of infants and children. This conclusion could be safely drawn from the recent findings by the aid agency ‘Save the Children’. According to the agency’s report, despite of rise in per-capita income, the countries with the highest child-mortality rate are Angola, Sierra Leone, Niger, Chad, Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Nigeria, South Africa and Cameroon. On the other hand, developing countries with low child-mortality rate are Nepal, Yemen, Malawi, Indonesia, Tanzania, Bangladesh, Egypt, Madagascar, Philippines and China.

Poor health systems in these developing countries, especially in Africa, are killing millions of newborn babies, young children and women in childbirth. According to WHO, a baby born in Sierra Leone is three and a half times more likely to die before its fifth birthday than a child born in India is, and more than a hundred times more likely to die than a child born in Iceland or Singapore is. Throughout the world the child mortality is higher in males than in females with a few exceptions. In China, India, Nepal and Pakistan the mortality in girls are greater than in boys. These disparities arise out of preferential treatments of boys in family health care and nutrition.

The main reason of death of children is the inability of the governments in these countries to direct their wealth in building up an efficient health care system. In developing countries, infectious and parasitic diseases remain the major killer. HIV or AIDS epidemics in the African countries are partly responsible for the rise in deaths in these regions. Although notable success has been achieved in some areas, notably polio but communicable diseases remain the major cause of death in these countries. With rise in AIDS epidemic, the African countries are caught in a rather precarious position. The diversion of already stretched resources away from child heath programmes into people living with AIDS has further complicated the situation in the rise of malarial mortality, civil unrest and social anarchy.

Via: Independent184062