The number of children who die before reaching their fifth birthday is closely monitored as a marker of social well-being and national development. It best summarises the social, economic, environmental and health care systems that children are born into and thus used as the basis of planning health strategies, programmes and interventions. It's also an important tool for evaluating the success of a country's child health policies.
There has been remarkable progress in improving child survival over the last three decades. But there's a long way to go: globally, 5.4 million children died before reaching their fifth birthday in 2017. This is equivalent to 15,000 child deaths per day. And the burden is unevenly distributed: sub-Saharan Africa region recorded 14 times more of these deaths compared to high-income countries. The region is home to all six countries in the world that recorded child mortality rates above 100 deaths per 1000 live births.
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