DHAKA: The number of children dying before the age of five has fallen significantly over the past 20 years, the UN children`s agency Unicef has said.
Some 6.9 million children died before the age of five last year, compared to 12 million such deaths in 1990. Almost 19,000 under-fives died daily in 2011.
Unicef said some of the reduction was due to poorer countries getting richer.
But some was also due to well-targeted aid such as encouraging breastfeeding or immunising against common diseases.
The sharpest drops in levels of child mortality were in countries that had received a lot of external assistance.
"If you look at the countries that have achieved the best results - the Lao People`s Democratic Republic, Timor Leste and Liberia - those are the top three - I think in all of those three aid has been a very important contributor," said Unicef`s UK director, David Bull.
Efforts to target infectious diseases such as measles have cut related deaths globally from 500,000 in 2000 to 100,000 in 2011.
Source: BBC
BDST: 0855 HRS, SEP 13, 2012
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