By Devi Thomas | Director, Shot@Life
Yesterday, UNICEF announced that the world is steadily moving forward on improving child survival. Their latest progress report confirms that the estimated annual number of under-five deaths has decreased by almost half since 1990, from 12.7 million to from 6.3 million. What's even better? This rate is falling fast and almost 100 million children have been saved in the past two decades.
Despite these encouraging successes, I was struck that this progress is not enough to meet Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 4—reducing childhood mortality by two-thirds. Measles, a disease that can be prevented by a vaccine, still kills an estimated 122,000 children per year. Dr. Richard Horton, Editor-in-Chief of The Lancet put it best when he said, "it is unacceptable, at this stage, to see complacency." More work needs to be done so no child dies of a preventable cause by their fifth birthday.
Shot@Life is committed to reducing childhood mortality by bringing access to vaccines to children around the globe. We need your support to renew our promise to all children. How can you step up the progress?
Together, we can further reduce these unnecessary deaths and give more children a shot at a happy life.
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