Africa: more chance of death than life

Children still face very different chances of survival depending on where they were born.

Sub-Saharan Africa is one of the regions that bear the heaviest burden.

According to the latest estimates by the United Nations for Child Mortality Estimates (UN IGME), it is estimated that five million children die before their fifth birthday and about 2 million die above the age of five.

Every day, many parents are faced with the trauma of losing their children, who sometimes die before they even take their first breath.

Children born in sub-Saharan Africa face the highest risk of childhood death, on average 15 times higher than children in Europe and North America.

While sub-Saharan Africa accounts for only 29% of the world's live births, this region accounted for 56% of all under-five deaths last year.

Most of the deaths of children occur before the age of five, and half of them die in the first month of life. For these babies, premature birth and complications during childbirth are the main cause of death.

More than 40% of stillbirths occur during childbirth, although most of them are preventable when women have access to quality care during pregnancy and childbirth.

A child dies every four seconds in the world and millions more could die by 2030 unless all women and children have access to adequate health care, two United Nations reports released Thursday show.

_{Source: UN news}