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Child mortality rate reduced by half

Says Un icef report

Staff Corresponded
The under-five child mortality rate has declined to 69 per thousand live births from 149 in 1990, showing a positive state of child's survival in the country, according to the annual Unicef report released yesterday.
One third of 50 developingcountries have reduced under-five mor-tality rate to 40 percent or more and Bangladesh is one of them, said the report titled 'The State of the World's Children 2008’.
Fhe report also revealed that the infant mortality rate has dropped from 100 to 52 per thousand live births while the neonatal mortality rate stands at 36 per thousand live births.
However, 22 percent of babies are born underweight while around 80 lakh under-five children (48 percent) are underweight.
Bangladesh has made remarkable progress by cutting by half the number of under-five child deaths since 1990. Today Bangladesh is on track to achieve MDG 4 on child mortality reduction," Unicef Representative in Bangladesh David Bassiouni said at the launch ot the report at a city hotel.
But disparities in education, income and access to services are still affecting child survival, he said, adding that reaching die unreached and the most marginalised communities with adequate healthcare remains a challenge in the country.
High number of neonatal deaths is slowing down the progress towards attainment of health-related MDGs, hesaid.
Expressing concern over the nutrition status of children, he said that a framework should be developed for nutrition in order to ensure a consolidated approach to cover all aspectsof nutrition.
"The number of child deaths should be reduced from 9.7 million in 2006 to 4 million by 2015," said Health Secretary AKM Zafar Ullah Khan.
To achieve it, accelerated action is needed on eradication of hunger and poverty', improving maternal health, combating HIV and AIDS, malaria and other major diseases, ensuring environmental
sustainability and developing a global partnership for develop merit, he added.
Presenting the key findings of the report. Chief Communication and Information of Unicef Bangladesh Christine Jaulmes said the report identifies five distinct actions to build up health systems in developingcountries.
The actions include realign programmes from disease specific interventions to evidence-based, high impact and integrated intervention packages to ensure a continuum of care, shaping maternal and child health a central tenet of integrated national planning processes for scaling up essential services, improving the quality and
consistency of financing to strengthen health system, obtaining national political commitment and creating conditions for greater harmonisation of global health programmes and partnerships.
Director General of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) Prof Mohammad Abul Faiz also spoke at the ceremony.
The Unicef report said that community level integration of essential services for mothers, newborns and young children, and sustainable improvements in national health system could save the lives of most of the 26,000 children under five who die each day globally.