English Transcript

Cập nhật 24/09/2008 15:26:50

The United Nations new report on infant and child mortality has some blunt messages for governments in the Asia Pacific.

It says they must spend more on health services, reduce the income gap and slow the pace of privatisation in the health sector. The UN's Childrens Fund - Unicef, says while progress has been achieved towards reducing infant mortality, there are clear challenges that still lie ahead.

Presenter: Ron Corben
Speaker: Anupama Rao Singh is UNICEF's regional director for Asia and the Pacific

CORBEN: The United Nations Children's Fund report for Asia and the Pacific says Asia's economic growth over the recent decades has been the key to lowering infant and child mortality rates across the region. Anupama Rao Singh is UNICEF's regional director for Asia and the Pacific says the region has made great strides in lowering infant and child mortality rates since the 1970s. But warns in recent years the gains have been parred

SINGH: The good dimension is that there has been progress in the decline of infant and child mortality rates if you compare it from the 1970s to date. Many countries are on track to achieving the millennium development goal of reducing infant and child mortality by two thirds by 2015. This progress has tended to taper off in the last 15 to 17 years. The 70s and 80s saw a much more rapid decline.

CORBEN: In 1970 the annual number of under-five deaths in the Asia Pacific was 10.5 million. By 1990 the figure had fallen to six-point-seven million. By 2006 this had declined to four million deaths. But there are concerns of reversals and Asia will be the key if the world is to achieve the millennium development goals. A high burden of neonatal deaths occurs due to insufficient maternal health care services, and maternal under nutrition. Pneumonia and diarroeheal diseases as well as measles claim many young lives.

SINGH: If Asia does not achieve the millennium development goals of reducing mortality by two thirds the world will not achieve them. Our estimates of 9.7 million children under five died last year - more than 4.0 million were in Asia alone - So the achievement of these goals in Asia is going to be of global significance.

CORBEN: But there are major challenges in which public policy in Asia is making its much harder for the infant mortality goals to be reached. Public health systems are under resourced and financed with less than one per cent of government budgets invested in the sector. Income disparities are also widening. In 1990 in South East Asia the bottom 20 per cent by income accounted for 7 per cent of all earnings. Now just 4.5 per cent of all income is available to the bottom 20 per cent. Added to this is privatization of the region's health service sector.

SINGH: So that while again there has been economic growth the gaps between the poor and the rich have widened which again places certain groups of the population in these countries at risk and certainly they're much worse off than the others. The privatization of health funds it essentially shifts the economic burden for health services from governments to the people themselves and this is where the poor particularly stand to suffer and are at greatest risk.

CORBEN: The key for the region will be in the performance of India and China if Asia is to reach the millennium development goals. In India the report calls for major improvements in health, nutrition, water and sanitation, and education to achieve its millennium goals. India has 127 million children under-five years. In 2006 it reported over two million under-five years dying.

SINGH: China is really addressing mortality and child deaths in the first four weeks of life. China is in terms of the national averages and norms clearly on a path of achieving the millennium development goal of two thirds reduction. India is different. India has to focus much more on accelerating the decline in mortality as a whole and do it much faster than China is planning to do if it is to reach the MDGs.

The report warns that if the Asia Pacific fails to extend essential services to the poor and marginalized groups as well as make efforts to narrow income disparities it may result in one million child deaths in the region in 2015 that could have otherwise been averted had the development goals been reached