LEVELS AND TRENDS IN CHILD MORTALITY

Global scenario:

• A child or a young adolescent died every five seconds in 2018. The major causes of neonatal mortality are pre-term birth, intrapartum related events, and neonatal infection.
  
  
• Half of all under-5 deaths in 2018 occurred in five countries: India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Ethiopia. India and Nigeria alone account for about a third.
  
  
• Current trends predict that close to 10 million 5- to 14-year-olds, and 52 million children under 5 years of age, will die between 2019 and 2030.
  
  
• In 2018, fewer countries showed gender disparities in child mortality, and across the world, boys are expected to have a higher probability of dying before reaching age 5 than girls. But this trend was not reflected in India.