“We’re concentrating our energies much more on the countries where the biggest challenges remain. We’re re-focusing on the killers of children that haven’t received enough attention yet,” says UNICEF Chief of Health Ian Pett.
The number of children dying before the age of five has fallen significantly over the past 20 years, the United Nation’s children’s agency Unicef reports on Sep 13 in the 2012 Progress Report on Committing to Child Survival: A Promise Renewed.
The sharpest drops in levels of child mortality were seen in countries that had received a lot of external assistance from other countries or organizations.
Unicef report also said some of the reduction was due to poorer countries getting richer, while some were due to well-targeted aid against common infectious and malnutrition diseases.