Decreases seen in the child mortality rate in Afghanistan
This is indeed good news from Afghanistan.
Six years after the Taliban’s ouster, medical care in Afghanistan has improved such that nearly 90,000 children who would have died before age 5 in 2001 will survive this year, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Sunday.
Saddled for years with one of the world’s worst records on child health, Afghanistan has seen access to health care rise dramatically since the U.S.-led invasion.
Thousands of health clinics have been built across the country, and the Afghan government and aid agencies have trained tens of thousands of doctors, vaccinators and health volunteers who now reach into some of the country’s most remote areas.
Access to health care for Afghans has jumped from 8 percent of the population in the 1990s to close to 85 percent today, thanks in large part to efforts by USAID, the World Bank and the European Commission.
The under-5 child mortality rate in Afghanistan has declined from an estimated 257 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2001 to about 191 per 1,000 in 2006, a 25-percent drop, the Ministry of Public Health said, relying on a new study from Johns Hopkins University.
There is still a long way to go for the citizens in Afghanistan with regard to their health care system but if the statistics in this article are any indication, they are certainly moving in the right direction.
Written by Sue
