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Asia’s avoidable woes

The United Nations Children’s Fund’s inaugural report focussing on Asia-Pacific countries brings home the crippling effects of inadequate investments in public health and education, coupled with deep-seated inequalities and socially sanctioned discrimination, on the lives of one half of the world’s children. This state of affairs is unconscionable especially in a region that has registered the world’s fastest economic growth since 1990, and yet inve sts less than the global average of 5.1 per cent of GDP in public health. Asia-Pacific countries have lowered mortality rates among under-5 children from 91 per 1,000 live births in 1990 to 59 in 2006. While this progress will help realise the millennium development goal of two-thirds reduction in mortality rates among under-5 children by 2015, the region will still face a million deaths by then if current trends persist. Pneumonia and diarrhoea are said to be responsible for between one-third and 40 per cent of the lives lost and the lack of immunisation coverage and under-nourishment extract a cruel toll. The absence of skilled attendants during deliveries, the lack of neonatal care, and general shortfalls of trained personnel aggravate the risks.

India, which is home to the largest number of under-5 children, accounted for a shocking one-fifth of worldwide deaths in this group in 2006. A factor that affects the survival chances of children is the reactionary practice of child marriage, involving 46 per cent of Indian women. Given the sheer size of the populations, progress in the South Asian region, above all in India, will make a big difference to the overall human development performance of the Asia-Pacific region. Sri Lanka’s continued commitment to basic health care and education, the socio-political challenges of recent decades notwithstanding, should serve as a model for other states in the sub-region.

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