Child Mortality.

I had to initially skip child mortality because it is kind of hard to talk about. I can tell you all how important it is to get vaccinated or how we need more education but when it comes to literally talking about children dying because of preventable things it is kind of hard. 

From a lecture I had in one of my classes we learned that 6.6 Million children are dying every year. That number may not seem very large to some people but once you consider that it is just children under 5 it gets a little scarier. 

The top 6 causes of child mortality are

1. Neonatal causes 

2. Pneumonia

3. Diarrhea

4. Malaria

5. Measles

6. AIDS

Almost 40% of children die in the neonatal period (under 28 days old) which makes sense that neonatal causes would be the number 1 killer. These causes are usually hard to deal with but if there was more maternal health care, like what was already discussed then this would help with these issues. 

I also already spoke about Malaria and AIDS. The same issues that exist in adults also exist in children but the issue can be exacerbated because children have weaker immune systems. 

That leaves pneumonia, diarrhea, and measles. There is a vaccination for measles so you can refer to my last post about diseases to read more about the importance of those. To most Americans, pneumonia and diarrhea are not really life threatening issues. If our pneumonia gets really bad then we go to the hospital and we can usually be treated. Diarrhea isn't really a problem for us unless to persists for too long because we have effective ways of treating it. These diseases truly are life threatening to children in developing nations. These are two treatable diseases that are killing children all the time. To me, it is seriously depressing that half of the top 6 killers of children are easily preventable and not even an issue in developed countries. That is a sign to me that things need to change and they need to change now.