Most countries, including India, will miss the UN target to reduce child mortality in the under fives by as much as two-thirds by 2015, researchers said today.
According to the latest estimates published in The Lancet journal, complications from premature births and pneumonia are now the leading causes of death in children under five years, together responsible for nearly 2 million deaths in 2013.
Researchers led by Professor Robert Black, of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in US, examined what caused an estimated 6.3 million deaths of newborn babies (neonates) and children under five years in 2013.
They found that complications from preterm birth were the largest single cause, responsible for 9,65,000 deaths in under-fives, with pneumonia responsible for a further 9,35,000 deaths, 'Medicalxpress.Com' reported.
India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, and China had the highest numbers of child deaths, together contributing to around half of all child and neonatal deaths globally in 2013.
The analysis found that more than half (51.8 per cent) of children died from infectious causes, including pneumonia, diarrhoea, and malaria.
The results are published as the 2015 deadline for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) approaches, with MDG4 (to reduce by two thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate) unlikely to be achieved by more than a handful of countries, researchers said.
"Despite remarkable progress at the level of global averages, at national level, MDG 4 will not be achieved in most countries in 2015," they said.
Although rates of child deaths reduced dramatically - from 77.4 to 45.6 per 1000 live-births - between 2000 and 2013, the authors' projections show that, if current trends continue, in 2030 4.4 million children under five years will still die, and 60 per cent of these deaths will occur in sub-Saharan Africa, the report said.
