There are miles to go before the global health community turns the corner on child mortality.
While deaths of children under the age of 5 have declined rapidly in the last two decades, the most recent data shows that nearly 7 million young children die yearly, largely from preventable causes. And less than half of low- and middle-income countries are on track to meet the Millennium Development Goal on child mortality.
Last June, USAID and UNICEF joined with partners to launch a campaign called “A Promise Renewed” with the aim of ending preventable child deaths, and more than 170 countries signed a pledge to reduce child mortality.
In this Special Report, correspondents across Africa and Asia examine what works and what doesn’t in the battle to end preventable child deaths. In partnership with the Kaiser Family Foundation, we have dispatched reporters to India, Bangladesh, Uganda, Zambia and Myanmar to focus on the key preventable diseases that are taking the lives of so many children before they reach their fifth birthdays. And we have set out to hold accountable the policy makers — in Washington and around the world — who control so much of the funding of this effort and the fate of so many young lives.
This Special Report, produced by The GroundTruth Project, appeared on GlobalPost.com in 2013.
