On to the next goal

Published by the Visayan Daily Star Publications, Inc.

NINFA R. LEONARDIA Editor-in-Chief & President

CARLA P. GOMEZ Editor CHERYL CRUZ Busines Editor NIDA A. BUENAFE Sports Editor RENE GENOVE Bureau Chief, Dumaguete MAJA P. DELY Advertising Coordinator

CARLOS ANTONIO L. LEONARDIA Administrative Officer

One of the eight Millennium Development Goals that were set by the United Nations in the year 2000 for a healthier, more prosperous world was to slash infant mortality rates from 1990 to 2015 by two-thirds. A recent reckoning of that goal that is set to expire this year has revealed that while tremendous global progress was made, the MDG on child mortality had been missed by a “wide margin”.

The number of deaths among children under five has halved globally since 1990. A study that measured the world's performance in one of the eight so-called Millennium Development Goals determined that only 62 of 195 countries met the targets they adopted 15 years ago.

The review that was published in The Lancet medical journal showed that the mortality rate among children younger than 5 fell globally from 91 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1990 to 43 per 1,000 in 2015. Translated into hard numbers, the preventable deaths for newborns, infants and small children shrank from 12.7 million in 1990 to an estimated 5.9 million this year.

Geeta Rao Gupta, deputy executive director of the UN Children's Fund that participated in the research, acknowledges the tremendous gains that have been made but adds: “But the far too large number of children still dying from preventable causes before their fifth birthday… should impel us to redouble our efforts to do what we know needs to be done.”

Nearly half of infant deaths are associated with malnutrition, and 45 percent occur during the first 28 days of life. In Sub-Saharan Africa today, one child in a dozen dies during the first four years of life, more than 12 times the average in high-income countries. Such data proves achieving that goal is no mean feat so kudos goes to the Philippines and the entire Southeast Asian region that did enough to meet the ambitious objective of reducing child mortality rates by 60 percent or more, since 1990.

As we congratulate our health officials for that achievement, let us help them gird the country to meet the Sustainable Development Goals of the next 15 years that is set to succeed the MDGs. If our Department of Health and local government units were able to implement the necessary child health and related programs to reach the goal that less than half of the world met, then we should be able to hit the new target of 25 or fewer under five deaths per 1,000 live births by 2030 and save even more Filipino children from unnecessary deaths.*