UNICEF warns on child mortality targets (Iraq loses most ground)

[JoFerret]

http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=598842§ion=news


UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - More than half the world's countries are falling behind in a U.N. campaign to reduce child deaths by two-thirds by 2015, the United Nations children's agency UNICEF says.

....
While most of the countries with the worst death rates are in sub-Saharan Africa, war-torn Afghanistan in central Asia also figures near the bottom of the rankings, with 257 deaths by age 5 out of every 1,000 live births, UNICEF said.

The country losing the most ground on child mortality since 1990 is Iraq, which lost two wars and was under tough U.N. sanctions during that period, UNICEF said.

Iraq is one of a number of countries, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa or Eastern Europe, where child mortality has increased rather than fallen since 1990, UNICEF said.

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[gottaB]

1. Effects of AIDS, poverty, war--Most of these deaths could be prevented

The full report is here: http://www.unicef.org/publications/index_23548.html

The report summarizes data from 1990 to 2002.

There's a video up on the unicef homepage.

Cf., State of the World’s Mothers 2004 from Save the Children. That report shows a matrix of correlations between indicators of the status of women, mothers, and children.

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The queit war against Iraq demonstrated the limitations of sanctions. Obviously Saddam Hussein's government was not overly concerned with the suffering of Iraqi people. Neither were the US and its allies. I think there are justifiable uses for sanctions, especially as an alternative to war, but one must be mindful of the ubiquity of cruel indifference.

Many resources on sanctions here: http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/sanction/theindex.htm


The current situation in Iraq is decidedly unhealthy:

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=43059&SelectRegion=Iraq_Crisis&SelectCountry=IRAQ

[JoFerret]

2. Very helpful post.

Thanks.