By TDT
More women and children have greater chances of surviving today, according to a new report on child and maternal mortality. The report, released by the United Nations group led by UNICEF and the World Health Organization, revealed that the Philippines has nearly halved the number of dying infants and of children dying before their fifth birthday, reflecting the global downward trend in maternal and child deaths.
The report showed that more babies are surviving as the number of infant deaths in the Philippines dropped from 40 per 1,000 live births in 1990, to 22 in 2018. Similarly, more children are surviving past the age of five, from 113,000 deaths down to 63,000 in the same period.
Globally, more women and children are surviving today mainly due to improved access to affordable, quality health services scaled up through universal health care. A trained health workforce, free care for pregnant women and children, and support to family planning led to the substantial decline in child and maternal deaths in many countries. Southeast Asian countries have made the most progress globally with an 80 percent decline in under-five deaths.
Despite the progress, the report says that around 2.8 million pregnant women and newborns die every year across the globe, or one every 11 seconds, mostly of preventable causes, the new estimates say.
The Philippines passed the Universal Health Care Law to strengthen primary health care by investing in skilled birth attendants, improving access to clean water, adequate nutrition, basic medicines and vaccines, and by supporting family planning. The United Nations Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation report on progress towards child survival goals and enhance country capacity to produce timely and properly assessed estimates of child mortality. For more information, visit http://www.childmortality.org/.
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