By Daniel Ooko
NAIROBI, June 24 (Xinhua) -- Latest data on mortality rates among mothers and young children are likely to encourage G8 leaders, who at their meeting later this week will make this health issue, long considered a neglected area of international development efforts, a 2010 priority.
According to the UN annual assessment of progress on the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) received here Thursday, the number of deaths among children under the age of five has dropped from 12.6 million in 1990 to an estimated 8.8 million in 2008, corresponding to a decline in the mortality rate from 100 deaths per 1,000 live births to 72 in 2008 (a 28 percent decline).
But progress is falling short of the MDG target under Goal 4, for a two-thirds reduction in childhood mortality rates between 1990 and 2015, and millions of children continue to die each year at a tragically young age.
"For too long, maternal and child health has been at the back of the MDG train," UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said earlier this year at the UN, at the 14 April launch of an initiative for a joint action plan among governments, businesses, foundations and civil society organizations.
"But we know it can be the engine of development," he continued, citing women as drivers of progress and healthy children as the starting point for a stronger, better educated and more productive citizenry.
According to the report, progress has been recorded by many countries on maternal mortality, and the latest preliminary data indicate that some countries have achieved significant declines.
However, the rate of reduction is still well short of the 5.5 percent annual reduction needed to meet the target under Goal 5, for slashing maternal mortality rates by three quarters between 1990 and 2015, the UN reports.
Hundreds of thousands of women -- 99 per cent of them in the developing world -- die annually as a result of pregnancy or childbirth.
Maternal health is difficult to measure, because of underreporting and uncertainty as to which factors may be most responsible for a mother's death.
But the UN's Millennium Development Goals Report 2010 shows that the rural-urban gap in skilled care during childbirth has narrowed, and more women are receiving skilled healthcare during pregnancy.
