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Infectious diseases were major cause of worldwide child mortality in 2008
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In 2008, 68% of deaths in children aged younger than 5 years around the world were caused by preventable infectious diseases like pneumonia, diarrhea and malaria, according to recently published data.
Researchers from WHO and UNICEF’s Child Health Epidemiology Reference Group estimated the mortality rates for neonates aged 0 to 27 days and children aged 1 to 59 months. They evaluated available registration data on child deaths from 193 countries and used multicause proportionate mortality and single-cause disease models to assess country-specific mortality and birth rates. Numbers of deaths by cause were then approximated for countries, regions and the world.
“With less than five years to reach the United Nations Millennium Development Goal 4 — to reduce child deaths by two-thirds from 1990 levels — it is vital for governments, public health organizations and donors to have accurate country-level estimates so they can target their efforts effectively,” Robert Black, MD, chair of the department of international health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said in a press release.
Study results revealed that 5.970 million of the 8.795 million deaths that occurred in children aged younger than 5 years worldwide were caused by infectious diseases. Pneumonia was responsible for death for 18%, diarrhea for 15% and malaria for 8%.
Forty-one percent of overall deaths occurred in neonates, indicating an increase from 37% in 2000. Primary causes included preterm birth complications (12%); birth asphyxia (9%); sepsis (6%); and pneumonia (4%).
The researchers also noted that 43% of all children aged younger than 5 years live in India, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Pakistan and China. The number of deaths in this age group, however, was a disproportionately high 49%.
These countries along with others in Africa also had the highest proportions of deaths for children in this age group:
- 52% of pneumonia-related deaths in India, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
- 51% of diarrhea-related deaths in India, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Ethiopia.
- 57% of malaria-related deaths in Nigeria, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Sudan and Tanzania.
“These findings have important implications for national programs,” Mickey Chopra, PhD, UNICEF Chief of Health, said in a press release. “The persistence of diarrhea, pneumonia and malaria, all of which are easily preventable and curable but which nonetheless remain the leading single causes of death worldwide, should spur us to do more to control these diseases.”
The researchers stressed the importance of regularly updating these data and using the information to implement effective prevention programs to lower worldwide child mortality rates before 2015.