Child Mortality

In response to the article (March 1) about child mortality in the United States versus other industrialized nations, I think the article was well done. The United States is now being challenged as the leader it once was. We cannot live in the shadow of the great United States; we must move on to better ourselves so we can compete with other industrialized nations such as Japan, Germany and France. I feel as though the United States is afraid of change or progress, so we have been content to sit back and let others take command.

The aid organization Save the Children released its annual State of the World's Mothers report Tuesday. Once again, conditions for moms in the U.S. trailed that of many other developed nations. The country's position climbed six places to 25 th , sandwiched between Belarus and the Czech Republic.  Save the Children's 2012 rankings compare 165 countries - 122 in the developing world - examining maternal health, education and economic status alongside the health and nutrition of children.

Underscoring historic recent gains in global health, the number of children younger than 5 who die this year will fall to 7.7 million, down from 11.9 million two decades ago, according to new estimates by population health experts. But as much of the world makes strides in reducing child mortality, the U.S. is increasingly lagging and ranks 42nd globally, behind much of Europe as well as the United Arab Emirates, Cuba and Chile. Twenty years ago, the U.S. ranked 29th in the child mortality rate, according to data analyzed by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.

Spending on healthcare in the United States continued to far outpace other industrialized countries in 2009, according to a new tally by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. Healthcare spending in the U.S. accounted for 17.4% of the nation's total economic output, nearly twice the average of 34 OECD countries, the OECD found. The next biggest health spender - the Netherlands - spent just 12% of its gross domestic product on medical care. Spending per capita on healthcare, which hit $7,960 in 2009, also far exceeded that of even some of the richest countries in Western Europe.

The United Nations children's agency says 8.8 million children die every year before their fifth birthday, 40% of them in India, Nigeria and Congo. New data released by UNICEF and published online in the British medical journal Lancet show a decline in the mortality rate for those younger than 5, a trend that has continued for the last two decades. UNICEF Executive Director Ann Veneman said 10,000 fewer children are dying every day compared with in 1990. Progress has been seen in every part of the world, including some of the least developed countries.

Egypt made the most progress among developing countries in reducing deaths of children younger than 5 from 1990 to 2005, while Iraq deteriorated the most, a U.S.-based charity reported Tuesday. Save the Children tracked child mortality trends in 60 developing countries during the 15-year period. Twenty made no progress in reducing deaths or had higher death rates. The 60 countries accounted for 94% of child deaths worldwide, the report says. About 10.

The aid organization Save the Children released its annual State of the World's Mothers report Tuesday. Once again, conditions for moms in the U.S. trailed that of many other developed nations. The country's position climbed six places to 25 th , sandwiched between Belarus and the Czech Republic.  Save the Children's 2012 rankings compare 165 countries - 122 in the developing world - examining maternal health, education and economic status alongside the health and nutrition of children.

Spending on healthcare in the United States continued to far outpace other industrialized countries in 2009, according to a new tally by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. Healthcare spending in the U.S. accounted for 17.4% of the nation's total economic output, nearly twice the average of 34 OECD countries, the OECD found. The next biggest health spender - the Netherlands - spent just 12% of its gross domestic product on medical care. Spending per capita on healthcare, which hit $7,960 in 2009, also far exceeded that of even some of the richest countries in Western Europe.

For most of us living in the developed world, diarrhea is an uncomfortable nuisance -- not a life-threatening event. But each year for more than a million children under the age of 5, it is a killer. It's known that a few simple precautions and treatments can make a difference and save a child. What's been unknown, say researchers led by Christa Fischer Walker of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, is whether providing those interventions makes a difference on a large scale, cutting disease and death rates around the globe.

Sub-Saharan Africa will not reduce poverty and hunger and improve child and maternal healthcare to meet the goals set a decade ago by the United Nations unless African and Western leaders do much more, several recent reports suggest. The main reasons: Donors have failed to keep pledges and many African nations have not improved their governments or increased health spending as promised. Only a handful of developed countries have met a pledge to increase foreign aid to 0.7% of their gross domestic product, while in some countries aid is declining.

For most of us living in the developed world, diarrhea is an uncomfortable nuisance -- not a life-threatening event. But each year for more than a million children under the age of 5, it is a killer. It's known that a few simple precautions and treatments can make a difference and save a child. What's been unknown, say researchers led by Christa Fischer Walker of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, is whether providing those interventions makes a difference on a large scale, cutting disease and death rates around the globe.

Leaders of the National American Woman Suffrage Assn. were thrilled when William Howard Taft agreed to address their convention in 1910, the first U.S. president to do so. They were less thrilled, though, when he proceeded to compare women to Hottentots, and not in a good way. "The theory that Hottentots or any other uneducated, altogether unintelligent class is fitted for self-government at once or to take part in government is a theory that I...

Sub-Saharan Africa will not reduce poverty and hunger and improve child and maternal healthcare to meet the goals set a decade ago by the United Nations unless African and Western leaders do much more, several recent reports suggest. The main reasons: Donors have failed to keep pledges and many African nations have not improved their governments or increased health spending as promised. Only a handful of developed countries have met a pledge to increase foreign aid to 0.7% of their gross domestic product, while in some countries aid is declining.

Underscoring historic recent gains in global health, the number of children younger than 5 who die this year will fall to 7.7 million, down from 11.9 million two decades ago, according to new estimates by population health experts. But as much of the world makes strides in reducing child mortality, the U.S. is increasingly lagging and ranks 42nd globally, behind much of Europe as well as the United Arab Emirates, Cuba and Chile. Twenty years ago, the U.S. ranked 29th in the child mortality rate, according to data analyzed by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.

The United Nations children's agency says 8.8 million children die every year before their fifth birthday, 40% of them in India, Nigeria and Congo. New data released by UNICEF and published online in the British medical journal Lancet show a decline in the mortality rate for those younger than 5, a trend that has continued for the last two decades. UNICEF Executive Director Ann Veneman said 10,000 fewer children are dying every day compared with in 1990. Progress has been seen in every part of the world, including some of the least developed countries.

The plight of the world's poorest was highlighted Thursday as "8" (Huit), a collection of short movies inspired by the U.N.'s Millennium Goals, premiered at the Rome Film Festival. The movie, touching on themes such as the fight against poverty and hunger, child mortality, the environment and education, is made of eight segments by eight directors, including Jane Campion and Wim Wenders, who were in Rome to present the project. Stories in the film -- whose other directors were Mira Nair, Abderrahmane Sissako, Gus Van Sant, Gaspar Noe, Jan Kounen and Gael Garcia Bernal -- include the life of an African man who has AIDS, the struggle of a pregnant woman in the Amazon rain forest who cannot afford to travel to a hospital and a devastating drought in Australia.

Two top Bush Administration officials leave this week on a 17-day swing through Africa in search of ways to combat the health problems of children. Louis W. Sullivan, Health and Human Services secretary, and Ronald W. Roskens, administrator of the Agency for International Development, will visit Mali, Nigeria, Uganda, Malawi, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Senegal. Roskens said that he and Sullivan, a doctor, will concentrate on recommending long-term programs to combat child mortality.

Re "Politics Questioned in Hospital Plan," Feb. 24: So we are going to sponsor a state-of-the-art children's hospital in Iraq because it has one of the highest rates of child mortality in the Middle East. I don't suppose that high mortality rate could be influenced by the epidemic of childhood leukemia that is the legacy of the depleted-uranium artillery shells that we used in Iraq in the first Gulf War? Or by the widespread child malnutrition that occurred under our postwar sanctions?

Egypt made the most progress among developing countries in reducing deaths of children younger than 5 from 1990 to 2005, while Iraq deteriorated the most, a U.S.-based charity reported Tuesday. Save the Children tracked child mortality trends in 60 developing countries during the 15-year period. Twenty made no progress in reducing deaths or had higher death rates. The 60 countries accounted for 94% of child deaths worldwide, the report says. About 10.

The United States and Britain ranked as the worst places to be a child, according to a UNICEF study of more than 20 developed nations released Wednesday. The Netherlands was the best, it says, followed by Sweden and Denmark. UNICEF's Innocenti Research Center in Italy ranked the countries in six categories: material well-being, health, education, relationships, behaviors and risks, and young people's own sense of happiness.