The 2012 edition of the World Health Statistics is now available:
For the first time, the World Health Statistics compares the state of child health from the years 2000 and 2010, showing how global public health advancements have helped save children’s lives in the past 10 years. In the year 2000, more than 477 000 children died from measles. In just 10 years, this vaccination has cut measles deaths by 74% to less than 114 000 child deaths worldwide. This achievement is entirely due to a strong campaign to increase global vaccination coverage. In 2010, 85% of children aged 12–23 months worldwide were immunized against measles.
Source: WHO
For the first time, the World Health Statistics compares the state of child health from the years 2000 and 2010, showing how global public health advancements have helped save children’s lives in the past 10 years. In the year 2000, more than 477 000 children died from measles. In just 10 years, this vaccination has cut measles deaths by 74% to less than 114 000 child deaths worldwide. This achievement is entirely due to a strong campaign to increase global vaccination coverage. In 2010, 85% of children aged 12–23 months worldwide were immunized against measles.
Maternal mortality
800
women died each day in 2010 due to complications of pregnancy
and child birth
Maternal mortality
Situation
Every day in 2010, about 800 women died due to complications of pregnancy and child birth, including severe bleeding after childbirth, infections, hypertensive disorders, and unsafe abortions. Out of the 800, 440 deaths occurred in sub-Saharan Africa and 230 in Southern Asia, compared to five in high-income countries. The risk of a woman in a developing country dying from a pregnancy-related cause during her lifetime is about 25 times higher compared to a woman living in a developed country. Maternal mortality is a health indicator that shows very wide gaps between rich and poor, both between countries and within them.
Trends
The number of women dying due to complications during pregnancy and childbirth has decreased by 47% from an estimated 543 000 in 1990 to 287 000 in 2010. The progress is notable, but the annual rate of decline is less than half of what is needed to achieve the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target of reducing the maternal mortality ratio by 75% between 1990 and 2015. This will require an annual decline of 5.5%. The 47% decline since 1990 translates into an average annual decline of just 3.1%.
Risk factors
1 in 10adults is obese
Overweight
Situation and trends
Worldwide, at least 2.8 million people die each year as a result of being overweight or obese, and an estimated 35.8 million (2.3%) of global DALYs are caused by overweight or obesity. Overweight and obesity lead to adverse metabolic effects on blood pressure, cholesterol, triglycerides and insulin resistance. Risks of coronary heart disease, ischemic stroke and type 2 diabetes mellitus increase steadily with increasing body mass index (BMI), a measure of weight relative to height. Raised body mass index also increases the risk of cancer of the breast, colon, prostate, endometrium, kidney and gall bladder. Mortality rates increase with increasing degrees of overweight, as measured by body mass index. To achieve optimum health, the median body mass index for an adult population should be in the range of 21 to 23 kg/m2, while the goal for individuals should be to maintain body mass index in the range 18.5 to 24.9 kg/m2. There is increased risk of co-morbidities for body mass index 25.0 to 29.9, and moderate to severe risk of co-morbidities for body mass index greater than 30.
In 2008, 35% of adults aged 20+ were overweight (BMI ≥ 25 kg/m2) (34% men and 35% of women). The worldwide prevalence of obesity has more than doubled between 1980 and 2008. In 2008, 10% of men and 14% of women in the world were obese (BMI ≥30 kg/m2), compared with 5% for men and 8% for women in 1980. An estimated 205 million men and 297 million women over the age of 20 were obese – a total of more than half a billion adults worldwide.
Child mortality
4.4 millionchildren under the age of 5 died from infectious diseases in 2010, nearly all of which were preventable
Causes of child mortality for the year 2010
Situation
Globally, the four major killers of children under age five were pneumonia (18%), prematurity (16%: 14% during the neonatal period and 2% in the post-neonatal period), diarrhoeal diseases (11%), and birth asphyxia (10%: 9% during the neonatal period and 1% in the post-neonatal period). Malaria was still a major killer in Sub-Saharan Africa, causing about 15 percent of under-five deaths in the region.
Of the total 7.6 million children who died before 5 years of age, 4.4 million (58%) died of infectious diseases. Of all infections, pneumonia (1.4 million), diarrhoea (800 000) and malaria (563 000) were the leading causes of death, accounting together for 36% of all under-five deaths worldwide. The majority of these deaths can be prevented by known, simple, affordable and low cost interventions such as exclusive breastfeeding up to 6 months of age, immunization, appropriate use of antibiotics, oral rehydration therapy and zinc, insecticide treated bednets, and anti-malarials.
About 40% of deaths in children younger than 5 years occurred before 28 days of life – the neonatal period. The most important cause of death was preterm birth complications. Birth asphyxia and sepsis were the second and third major causes of death in this early period of life, responsible together for 1.2 million deaths. The risk of dying from these conditions can be mitigated with quality care during pregnancy, safe and clean delivery by a skilled attendant, and immediate postnatal care, including neonatal resuscitation, extra care of low birth weight babies, attention to baby warmth, treatment of neonatal sepsis and early initiation of breastfeeding.
Distribution
Patterns of the distribution of causes of child deaths vary widely between regions. The lowest proportion of neonatal deaths (30%) occurred in the African Region. On the other hand 96% of all under-five deaths due to malaria and 89% of all deaths due to HIV/AIDS worldwide happened in the African Region. In the remaining five WHO regions, high proportions of under-five child deaths occurred during the neonatal period, ranging from 42% in the Eastern Mediterranean Region to 54% in the Western Pacific Region. The proportion of deaths from pneumonia is lowest in the Americas and Europe. Deaths due to diarrhoeal diseases were responsible for only 4% of deaths in these same regions.
Trends
The number of under-five deaths worldwide dropped from 12 million in 1990 to 9.6 million in the year 2000 to 7.6 in 2010. Nearly 60% of the 2 million lives saved in the past decade were due to reductions of deaths caused by pneumonia (455 000 fewer deaths), measles (363 000 fewer deaths), and diarrhoea (361 000 fewer deaths). India, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Pakistan, and China contributed to half the mortality attributable to infections and more than half due to neonatal causes worldwide.
No comments:
Post a Comment