Mortality of children under 5 down in Ethiopia: Report

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia

Mortality of children under the age of five has declined by two-thirds in Ethiopia, a report revealed on Monday.

The Ethiopian government -- with support of UNICEF -- prepared a report titled National Situation Analysis of Children and Women in Ethiopia.

The analysis announced every five years was launched by Ethiopia’s State Minister of Finance Admasu Nebebe, UNICEF representative to Ethiopia Adele Khodr, and Kalkidan Hailemariam, the children’s parliament speaker of Addis Ababa city.

Government officials, researchers, representatives of international development partners as well as women and children attended the event launching the report addressing topics such as child health, nutrition, child marriage, education as well as safe water and sanitation.

“However 96,000 babies are dying every year from neonatal causes,” the report said, “and 872,000 are not fully vaccinated.”

Even though stunting of children under the age of five declined from 58% in 2000 to 37% to date, there are 5.4 million children who are too short for their age, according to the data.

“[…] the current rate of reduction needs to redouble if Ethiopia is to meet the sustainable development goals,” it said.

On the child marriage, the report said a notable reduction has been witnessed with the prevalence declining from 60% in 2005 to 40% in 2016.

“However, Ethiopia still has 15 million child brides, six million of whom were married before the age of 15.”

The report said the number of children registering schools for education has increased but “…currently, 2.6 million children aged 7-14 years are not enrolled in a school and more than half are girls.”

In regards to access to and use of water, it said, “the proportion of people using unsafe water declined from 75% in 2000 to 31% in 2016.”