Gapcast #11 -Reducing Child Mortality

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Gapcast #11 -Reducing Child Mortality

Duration: 9 minutes and 59 seconds

Country: Sweden

Language: English

License: CC - Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives

Genre: Video Podcast

Producer: Gapminder

Director: Gapminder

Views: 18 (1 embedded)

Posted by: gapminder on Nov 7, 2008

Nearly 10 million children under five die every year. Almost 90% of all child deaths are attributable to just six conditions: neonatal causes, pneumonia, diarrhoea, malaria, measles, and HIV/AIDS. The aim (Millenium Development Goal 4) is to cut child mortality by two thirds by 2015. How can this be achieved? Which countries make sufficient progress? And with which rate did a country like Norway reduce its child mortality the last 100 years? Watch Gapcast #11 to understand the background and the current status of a Millenium Development Goal.

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Video Transcription

This is the world in 1959
The size of this bubble represents the number of children born in the world
It was 100 million children born in 1959
On this axis here we can see the death among these children
Child mortality was 150 deaths per 1000 children born
This axis goes from 20 deaths per 1000 to 500 deaths per 1000
This axis down here shows the income per person
It was 3000 dollars per year in 1959
The axis goes from 500 dollars all the way to 30 000 dollars
But the world was obviously very unequal
I will show this by splitting the world bubble into country bubbles
Look
Each bubble is a country
The size is the number of births
I will zoom up to show you what has changed since
The blue ones here are the developing countries
The brown ones here are the industrialized countries
The industrialized countries had higher income and lower child mortality
But what has changed?
I will start the world and you can see
Year by year, how the child mortality is falling
It��s falling, it��s going down
Child mortality is getting lower
Income is increasing
The former developing countries are coming into the circle here
which represents the industrialized countries
The big one there is China, coming all the way down
You have a new pattern in the world
The high income countries had a very high income and very low child mortality
But also some developing countries have reached all the way down here
what I should say ��former developing countries��
Most countries in the world are in the middle position
Some had very high child mortality and low income
Now how fast did that change take place?
Millennium Development Goal (MDG) NO. 4
is specified by the UN
as a lowering of child mortality with two-thirds in 25 years
That is one generation
But a modern way to measure that is to measure
Average Annual Rate of Reduction
This is a way to measure child mortality in the same way as we measure economic growth
in percent change per year
The aim is to change child mortality by lowering with 4.3%
More than 4%, we could say
Now let me give you an example. Norway is a very successful country
with very high income and very low child mortality
I will now take Norway backwards into history
Look, Norway flies back within history
and it lands in the year 1900
Norway had a high child mortality �C 140 children dying per 1000 born
It was up here
Among countries that have the highest child mortality
Now I will make a very interesting comparison
I will compare Norway with Bangladesh
I have chosen 1990, the year when we started to measure MDG goal
Then Bangladesh had 140 children dying,
exactly the same as Norway had in 1900
That was 90 years difference
I want to know which country will lower the child mortality faster
Norway more than 100 years ago, or Bangladesh 16 years ago?
Here we go!
Bangladesh is reducing in the same speed as Norway
But now Bangladesh is going faster
When we reach 2006,
Bangladesh reduced with 4.7% and achieved the MDG goal rate
and they were faster than Norway
Not to be surprised, actually
Because now they have vaccines, antibiotics
We know more about the importance of breast feeding
So it should be able to reduce faster, and it did
But I will give Norway one more chance
I will compare Norway 1916 with Egypt 1990
The year when MDG goal measurement started
Egypt then had 91 children dying per 1000
Here we start
You can see how they are going down
Egypt is becoming faster and faster in the speed
They are very successful in reduction, actually 5.5%
much faster than MDG goal rates
But Norway in the past could not follow
The final chance for Norway
we will compare Norway 1932
Norway had the same child mortality as Brazil had in 1990
Here we go
Brazil is fast
Norway goes into the 2nd World War
That was a difficult period
They haven��t had any chance to go as fast in that period
as Brazil did in the last 16 years
Brazil reaches amazingly 6.3%
much faster than MDG goal rate
This tells us in practice,
MDG goal can be achieved!
Now let��s look how Norway will continue
Norway was indeed in history very successful
But it reached down to its present position by a reduction of 3.3% per year
About the other countries of the world
These green ones, they have achieved MDG goal
exactly as Bangladesh, Egypt and Brazil
or they are very well on the way to achieve that
because we will continue to measure after 2006
The yellow ones here
The yellow ones are countries which have gone in Norway��s speed
They have reduced child mortality
but not really as fast as the target set by UN
2, 3%, or 4% perhaps
Our concerns are the red countries
Look, the red countries up here have high child mortality and almost no reduction
They reduced very little or not at all
The main concern for me is that
these countries have the lowest income and highest child mortality
It means that the country with the highest child mortality
are those which also have the slowest reduction
That is a really serious concern
We must make vaccines and treatment reach those in greatest need
Now there is a good news
Look at this country
Tanzania
According to the measurement from 1990
It has insufficient reduction
But I will show you a more detailed study
This is published in the Lancet
The main medical journal in April this year
It shows on this axis the years from 1990 (to 2005)
Here it shows child mortality
Tanzania indeed during the first 9 years of MDG goal measurement
It did not reduce at all, it was a red country
But what has happened is this
Now they have a faster reduction
The researchers that did this careful study
Tanzanian researchers together with international researchers
They were careful, they said,
this was a short period,
and there is an uncertainty range
These little lines show the uncertainty range
But they said, it��s highly probable,
because at the same time,
certain action were taken.
We have marked them here.
Tanzanian government doubled the health budget
Tanzania has an economic growth now
The AID organisation provided vaccines and immunizations
through an international coordinated effort
And bed nets were provided that protects the children against malaria death
So we have good reasons to believe that Tanzania now actually is a country on track to MDG goal
After a period of 9 years no reduction. Good news!
I have a final graph
The total number of children who die in the world
We actually know this estimate fairly well
We know that in 1970
There was more than 15 million children dying
This has declined so that today it is less than 10 million children dying
If we continue as we do today
It will continue to decrease
But too slow, I think,
and many who are like me have been able to study this
We are eager that we move faster
Because what can be done with what we have in our hands today is this
If we add bed nets to everyone that needs it
we will save 1 million children
If we add new vaccines
which now exists for protection of children against pneumonia, infection in the lung
we will save 2 million children
If we provide services for pregnant women and new-born children
we will save another 2 million
We can save 5 million children every year within 10 years
That is achieving MDG goal
It is within our power to replace funerals for children with happy children!

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Gapcast #11 -Reducing Child Mortality

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