India among five countries that will see high under-5 deaths: UN

United Nations: India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Congo and Angola will account for more than half of global under-five deaths by 2030, according to a UN report which said 69 million children below five will die in the next 14 years unless disadvantaged children are cared for.

'The State of the World's Children', UNICEF's annual flagship report, paints a stark picture of what is in store for the world's poorest children if governments, donors, businesses and international organisations do not accelerate efforts to address their needs.

"Denying hundreds of millions of children a fair chance in life does more than threaten their futures by fueling intergenerational cycles of disadvantage, it imperils the future of their societies," said UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake.

"We have a choice: Invest in these children now or allow our world to become still more unequal and divided," he said.

The report said that the pace of progress on child and maternal health and survival can increase or decrease as a result of policy choices made by governments and the international community in the coming years. However, if current trends continue, there will be 3.6 million deaths of children under age 5 in 2030 alone.

A total of 69 million such deaths will have occurred between 2016 and 2030, with sub-Saharan Africa accounting for around half of these and South Asia for another third.

The report said five countries will account for more than half of the global burden of under-five deaths, India (17 per cent), Nigeria (15 per cent), Pakistan (8 per cent), Congo (7 per cent) and Angola (5 per cent).

The global maternal mortality rate will be around 161 deaths per 100,000 live births still five times the level for high-income countries in 1990.

It said pneumonia will remain the second biggest killer of children under the age of five and preterm birth complications will remain the first.

The report noted that significant progress has been made in saving children's lives, getting children into school and lifting people out of poverty.

Global under-five mortality rates have been more than halved since 1990, boys and girls attend primary school in equal numbers in 129 countries and the number of people living in extreme poverty worldwide is almost half of what it was in the 1990s. But this progress has been neither even nor fair, the report said.

The poorest children are twice as likely to die before their fifth birthday and to be chronically malnourished than the richest.

Apart from education, the UNICEF study also pointed at rise in numbers of neo-natal deaths (probability of dying during the first 28 days of life) in 2015 in India, which accounted for 45 per cent of total child mortality.

The report suggests that this can be addressed by ensuringmaternal educational, which contributes to a child's chances of survival.

"Across much of south Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, children with mothers who received no education are almost three times as likely to die before age of 5 as children of mothers with secondary education.

"Education enables women to delay and space births, secure access to maternal and child health care and seek treatment for children when they fall ill. If all mothers achieved secondary education, there would be 1.3 million fewer annual deaths of children under age 5 in South Asia," it said.

The report also stressed that poverty was a huge obstacle in ensuring literacy among women as marriage often cuts short their pursuit for education.

"Girls from the poorest households and those living in rural areas- face twice the risk of being married before turning 18 as girls from the richest households or those living in urban areas.

"With no progress, almost 950 million women will have been married as children by 2030, up from more than 700 million today. And by 2050, almost half of the world's child brides will be African," it said.