UN: Zim child mortality up 20%
2009-11-24 21:26
Special Report
A classical music presenter for the BBC has been arrested and is in custody in Zimbabwe.
Harare - Zimbabwe's infant mortality rate has risen by 20% over the past two decades as children under the age of five succumb to the HIV/Aids pandemic and pneumonia, a joint government and UN survey showed on Tuesday.
The UN Children's Fund (Unicef) said on Tuesday a survey it carried with Zimbabwe's government in May this year showed the number of children dying under the age of five had risen by 20% since 1990, the baseline year for the UN's Millennium Development Goals.
However, Unicef had said in a March 2005 report that the under-5 mortality rate rose 50% between 1990-2005 to 1 death in every 8 births, suggesting that the mortality rate is now increasing at a slower pace than before.
The latest report showed that between 2005-2009, 94 children out of every 1 000 newly born children died before reaching the age of five, up from 82 deaths in 2005.
"Major causes of death of children under five are HIV/Aids, newborn disorders, pneumonia and diarrhoea," it said.
Half of women in Zimbabwe's poor rural areas were also giving birth at home, with high hospital fees proving a barrier to women accessing obstetric services.
Zimbabwe's economic woes have destroyed the public health system, a factor highlighted by last year's cholera outbreak which killed nearly 5 000 people.
On Tuesday the official Herald newspaper reported that six suspected cholera cases had been recorded in the past week in a poor township in the capital Harare, whose authorities are struggling to supply clean water to residents.
- Reuters