UNICEF reports rising infant mortality in Cameroon

By Harry Ndienla Yemti

Cameroon is among 20 countries with very high infant mortality

A United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) report titled “The Survival of the Child” has revealed that the infant mortality rate in Cameroon is on the rise.
According to the 2008 state of the World Children report published in Yaounde recently, the infant
mortality rate here jumped from 139 per 1000 children in 1990 to 149 per 1000 in 2006, for children between one and five years old.

For less than one-year-old children, the rate climbed from 85 in 1999 to 87 per 1000 in 2006, the world report stated. The report says the figures have been on the rise in the last two decades.
Among 270 countries classified, Cameroon is one among the 20 worst countries in terms of children’s survival.

On the global scene, the report, revealing the results of a survey carried out by the World Bank and UNICEF, says 26,000 children of less than five years old die each day across the world due to preventable diseases, with 75 percent occurring in developing countries, especially in Africa.

“We can’t turn a blind eye to the tens of thousands of young children who die everyday in developing countries, mostly from causes that are preventable,” football star and UNICEF ambassador, David Beckam, said.
The resident representative of UNICEF in Cameroon, Silvia Luciani, who has come to the end of her mission in Yaounde, said with exclusive breast feeding at birth, vaccination and provision of Vitamin A supplements, adequate deparasiting and the use of insecticide-treated mosquito nets, the situation can be checked.
She urged governments to concentrate their efforts on the needs of women, mothers and newborn babies. She recommended community – based health systems as a way
of curbing the ill. “Children’s survival is not only human rights imperative; it is also a development imperative.
Investing in the health of children and their mothers is a sound economic decision and one of the surest ways for a country to set its course towards a better future,” a World Bank statement has said.