Preventable Deaths

These are hard times everywhere. But developed countries must not overlook the particular vulnerability of the world’s poor. A new report by the World Health Organization shows that far too many people are still dying of preventable causes in the poorest countries.

The good news is that in 2007, only nine million children died before their fifth birthday — 3.5 million fewer than in 1990. The under-5 mortality rate has fallen 27 percent since then, to 67 deaths per 1,000 live births. The numbers are still too high. And they are short of the aspirations of the United Nations’ Millennium Declaration of 2000, which set a goal of slashing mortality rates of children under 5 to 31 deaths per 1,000 live births by 2015.

In some countries, mostly in Africa, the trend is going the wrong way. In Congo, the child mortality rate rose by about 25 percent, to 125 deaths per 1,000 live births.

Other health statistics are also troubling.

Maternal mortality remains at around 400 deaths per 100,000 live births, virtually unchanged from its level in 1990. Globally, the proportion of undernourished children under 5 has fallen to 20 percent from 27 percent, seemingly on track to meet the goal of halving the prevalence of malnutrition by 2015. But many countries — from Armenia to Morocco to Burkina Faso — have seen no improvement at all.