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About five million infants will die worldwide in 2021 – plus more than two million children, adolescents and young adults. The UN attributes most deaths to poor access to good health care. However, there are also positive trends.
Many young people still die from treatable diseases or injuries because they lack good medical care, according to the United Nations (UN). According to a new estimate, the UN reported about five million children under five died worldwide in 2021.
7.7 million deaths per year
Bacterial infection is the second leading cause of death
Another 2.1 million children, adolescents, and young adults died between the ages of 5 and 24. Together, this equates to one end worldwide every 4.4 seconds. In addition, there were 1.9 million stillbirths.
“Access to quality health care remains a matter of life and death for children worldwide,” the UN said. At the same time, there has been progressing between 2000 and 2021, according to the report, with the under-five mortality rate falling by 50 percent, the rate for older children up to age 24 falling by 36 percent and the number of stillbirths falling by 35 percent.
Life expectancy in Germany is increasing more slowly.
Nevertheless, if mothers had been better cared for during pregnancy and childbirth and young people had had access to good health care, most of the deaths could have been avoided, the UN children’s agency UNICEF said. Additional investment in primary health care for all women and children is needed.
It said that children in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa are particularly at risk. “It is deeply unfair that a child’s chances of survival can be determined solely by where he or she is born and that there are such great inequalities in access to life-saving health services,” said Anshu Banerjee, director of the department of maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health at the World Health Organization (WHO).
- source: ntv.de, kst/dpa/picture: Bild von Johana Peña auf Pixabay
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