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In recent years, the world has made progress in reducing deaths among children under the age of five. A new report says an estimated 6.9 million children worldwide died before their fifth birthday. That compares to about 12 million in 1990. The report says child mortality rates have fallen in all areas. It says the number of deaths is down by at least fifty percent in eastern, western and southeastern Asia. The number also fell in North Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. The World Bank and three United Nations agencies worked together on the report. The three are the U.N. Children’s Fund, the World Health Organization and the U.N. Population Division. Ties Boerma is head of the WHO’s Department of Health Statistics and Informatics. He says most child deaths happen in just a few areas. TIES BOERMA: “Sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia face the greatest challenges in child survival. More than eighty percent of child deaths in the world occur in these two regions. About half of child deaths occur in just five countries -- India, which actually takes 24% of the global total; Nigeria, eleven percent; the Democratic Republic of Congo, seven percent; Pakistan, five percent and China, four percent of under-five deaths in the world.” Ties Boerma notes that, in developed countries, one child in one hundred fifty-two dies before his or her fifth birthday. But south of the Sahara Desert, one out of nine children dies before the age of five. In Asia, the mortality rate is one in sixteen. | 
