VOA慢速英語: Fewer Children Under the Age of Five are Dying

[ti:Fewer Children Under the Age of Five are Dying] [ar:Christopher Cruise] [al:Health Report] [by:www.51voa.com] [00:00.00]This is the VOA Special English Health Report. [00:08.57]In recent years, the world has made progress [00:13.29]in reducing deaths among children under the age of five. [00:16.58]A new report says an estimated [00:19.81]six-point-nine million children worldwide [00:22.55]died before their fifth birthday. [00:27.83]That compares to about twelve million in nineteen ninety. [00:31.91]The report says child mortality rates [00:35.94]have fallen in all areas. It says [00:38.08]the number of deaths is down [00:41.56]by at least fifty percent in eastern, [00:44.20]western and southeastern Asia. [00:47.83]The number also fell in North Africa, [00:50.92]Latin America and the Caribbean. [00:57.45]The World Bank and three United Nations agencies [00:59.64]worked together on the report. [01:03.48]The three are the U.N. Children's Fund, [01:06.16]the World Health Organization [01:09.24]and the U.N. Population Division. [01:14.47]Ties Boerma is head of the WHO's Department [01:17.65]of Health Statistics and Informatics. [01:22.38]He says most child deaths happen in just a few areas. [01:25.47]TIES BOERMA: "Sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia [01:28.30]face the greatest challenges in child survival. [01:32.48]More than eighty percent of child deaths in the world [01:34.77]occur in these two regions. [01:39.50]About half of child deaths occur in just five countries -- [01:44.18]India, which actually takes twenty-four percent of the global total; [01:49.28]Nigeria, eleven percent; the Democratic Republic of Congo, [01:53.36]seven percent; Pakistan, five percent and China, [01:57.80]four percent of under-five deaths in the world." [02:01.38]Ties Boerma notes that, in developed countries, [02:05.86]one child in one hundred fifty-two dies [02:09.00]before his or her fifth birthday. [02:12.18]But south of the Sahara Desert, [02:17.06]one out of nine children dies before the age of five. [02:22.04]In Asia, the mortality rate is one in sixteen. [02:27.06]The report lists the top five causes of death [02:30.31]among children under five worldwide. [02:37.37]They are pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria and problems [02:40.21]both before and during birth. [02:45.30]Tessa Wardlaw is with the U-N Children's Fund. [02:48.43]She is pleased with the progress [02:50.96]being made in Sub-Saharan Africa. [02:57.09]The area has the highest under-five mortality rate in the world. [03:01.66]But she says the rate of decline in child deaths [03:04.65]has more than doubled in Africa. [03:09.13]TESSA WARDLAW: "We welcome the widespread progress in child survival, [03:13.06]but we importantly want to stress [03:15.95]that there's a lot of work that remains to be done. [03:20.38]There's unfinished business and the fact is that today on average, [03:24.11]around nineteen thousand children are still dying every day [03:26.30]from largely preventable causes." [03:29.33]The World Health Organization says [03:31.72]one way to solve these problems [03:36.40]is to make sure health care services are available to women. [03:40.88]In this way, medical problems can be avoided [03:43.78]or treated when identified. [03:51.24]We have placed a link to the report on our website, 51voa.com. [03:55.57]And that's the VOA Special English Health Report. [03:57.87]I'm Christopher Cruise.

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