New Study-Poverty Leads 10.6 Million Children/Yr to an Early Grave

Poverty leads 10 million children to an early grave

New estimates add weight to the urgency of Africa's needs

James Meikle, health correspondent
Friday March 25, 2005
The Guardian

About 10.6m children under five die each year, most from preventable causes, World Health Organisation advisers estimate.Almost four in 10 die within 28 days of birth and more than four in 10 deaths are in southern and western Africa.

The figures, published soon after Tony Blair's Commission for Africa called for huge injections of aid to improve health on the continent, confirm the size of the global public health disaster international bodies such as the G8, the WHO and Unicef are trying to tackle.

Scientists believe their latest estimates, based on an analysis of death registrations, long-term research and improved models for calculating mortality rates between 2000 and 2003, are the most accurate yet.

The deaths are mainly from pneumonia (19%), diarrhoea (17%), malaria (8%), measles (4%), HIV/Aids (3%) and injuries (3%). Premature birth (28%), sepsis or pneumonia (26%), and asphyxia (23%) are the most common causes of very early death.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1445405,00.html

Maybe when multinational corporations wear out their current stock of slaves someone will take notice.

How can this be?

someone's finally noticed the shortage of 'feeding tubes'.

elsewhere, the kin of Ata weep.

dp

I've been reading about this more so, lately. It's so sad, and going totally ignored, but these lives do not equate $$$.

What the hell happened to this country? In just a few short years we went from "fine" to "whacked," by the unhinged insanes in charge and I question what they're in charge of...

http://www.christianaid.org.uk/africa2005/
http://www.americamagazine.org/editorial.cfm?articleTypeID=3&textID=1127&issueID=324
Some good reading in the second link

Dehydration due to diarrhea used to be by far in the #1 position. Is there better treatment for it now? What's changed?