International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics

Countries across the globe are not on course to achieve targets on cutting child mortality, officials have warned.

According to Unicef and the World Health Organization (WHO), approximately 19,000 children aged under five died each day last year.

More than one-third of these died within a month of being born, as a result of conditions such as pneumonia, diarrhoea, malaria and pre-term birth complications.

Unicef and WHO noted that improvements have been made in many countries in the last few years.

However, it does not believe they are enough to "achieve Millennium Development Goal 4 of reducing the global under-five mortality rate by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015".

The two groups noted that only six out of ten regions in the world are on course to meet this target.

As a result, WHO and Unicef have called for the expansion of "proven solutions" to speed up "progress on child survival faster and farther".

Posted by Paul Robertson