However, the pace of reduction in child mortality has slowed by over 60 percent since 2015, the “Levels & Trends in Child Mortality” report said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An estimated 4.9 million children died before their fifth birthday in 2024, including 2.3 million newborns, and most of these deaths were preventable with proven, low-cost interventions and access to quality health care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Newborn deaths accounted for nearly half of all under-five deaths, reflecting slower progress in preventing deaths around the time of birth, the report said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Leading causes among newborns were complications from preterm birth and complications during labor and delivery, it said, adding that infections, including neonatal sepsis and congenital anomalies, were also important causes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For the first time, the report estimated deaths directly caused by severe acute malnutrition, finding that more than 100,000 children aged 1 to 59 months died from it in 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Child deaths remain highly concentrated geographically. In 2024, sub-Saharan Africa accounted for 58 percent of all under-five deaths, followed by Southern Asia with 25 percent, according to the report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“To accelerate progress and save lives, UNICEF calls on governments, donors and partners to make child survival a political and financing priority, to focus on those at highest risk, strengthen accountability and invest in primary healthcare systems,” Farhan Haq, deputy spokesperson for the UN secretary-general, said at a daily briefing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Across the globe, deaths of children under five years old have fallen by more than half since 2000, according to a report released Wednesday by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2000105862,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[151,69],"byline":[235],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-2000105859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","tag-editors-choice","tag-homehighlights","byline-xinhua"],"bylines":[{"id":235,"name":"Xinhua","slug":"xinhua","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":80}],"contributors":[{"id":235,"name":"Xinhua","slug":"xinhua","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":80}],"featured_image":{"id":2000105862,"url":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/mt.jpg","alt":"","caption":"Newborn infant boy Ayah, whose mother bled to death following his delivery and who suffers from jaundice and sepsis and weighs only 1.3 kilograms, has his hand held by his grandmother Await Said as he lies in an incubator at the Juba Teaching Hospital, Juba, South Sudan, Monday 29 January 2018. The hospital does not have the equipment to properly test and treat Ayah. According to the paediatrician on the ward, \"if a baby needs anything more than basic treatment then there is nothing we can do. We are doing our absolute best but some things are simply out of our control\u201d. More than 10% of infants that are born at the hospital's neonatal clinic die. South Sudan has some of the highest maternal and infant mortality rates in the world with one in 26 infants dying within 28 days of birth.","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":600,"height":400,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/mt.jpg","width":150,"height":100},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/mt.jpg","width":300,"height":200},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/mt.jpg","width":600,"height":400},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/mt.jpg","width":600,"height":400},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/mt.jpg","width":600,"height":400}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2000105859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2000105859"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2000105859\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2000105864,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2000105859\/revisions\/2000105864"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000105862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2000105859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2000105859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2000105859"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=2000105859"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=2000105859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}