IRAQ: Little progress on child mortality - UNICEF

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

ANKARA, 11 Oct 2004 (IRIN) - The least progress has been made in Iraq to reduce child mortality since 1990, following years of sanctions and the US-led invasion, according to a new global report by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

”Since 1990, Iraq has experienced a bigger increase in under-five mortality rates than any other country in the world and since the war there are several indications that under-five mortality has continued to rise,” Roger Wright, UNICEF’s representative for Iraq, told IRIN from the Jordanian capital, Amman, on Friday.

His comments coincided with UNICEF’s “Progress for Children report”, voicing an alarming slow progress on reducing child deaths worldwide “despite the availability of proven, low-cost intervention.” The child survival report ranks countries on their average annual rate of progress since 1990, which is the baseline year to achieve the fourth Millennium Development Goal (MDG) on reducing the under-five mortality rate by two-thirds by 2015.

According to the study, Iraq’s average annual rate of progress
(-7,6 percent) between 1990 and 2002 shows the country is not likely achieve that goal. “An enormous improvement is needed if Iraq is to achieve this goal,” Wright stated, noting that Iraq would be capable of a “dramatic” improvement in child survival and achieving the MDG if there was peace in the country.

“Peace would allow the Iraqi authorities and agencies to embark on the needed humanitarian assistance, reconstruction and reforms that are so urgently needed to improve the health, welfare and survival of children and women,” he added.

Decades of Saddam Hussein’s rule and sanctions imposed by the international community heavily impacted the population’s worsening nutrition, reducing investment in health services and deteriorating the quality of the water supply and sanitation. All these factors contributed to an alarming increase in the under-five mortality, according to UNICEF.

During the 1990s, the greatest increases in child mortality occurred in southern and central Iraq, where under-five mortality rose from 56 to 131 per 1,000 live births.

Over the same period, in the three northern governorates, the under-five mortality rate fell from 80 to 72 per 1,000 live births, UNICEF said.

While some indications showed improvement in child health between 1999 and 2002, the children’s agency believed that child mortality was not getting any better since the conflict started in 2003 and that the death rate among children was rising.

UNICEF estimates that there are about 6,880 deaths of children under the age of five every year in Iraq, with an under-fives mortality rate of 125 per 1,000 live births.

Following recent attacks against health workers and hospitals, many families were avoiding going to health care centres.

“The level of insecurity means women are less likely to use pre-natal clinics, or to respond quickly enough if an emergency arises during pregnancy or childbirth,” the UNICEF representative said, adding that most child deaths occurred immediately after birth.

Munib Ahmed al-Zubaidi, a paediatrician at the children’s hospital at Medical City in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, told IRIN that many babies were delivered at home and many mothers did not get any sort of pre-natal care.

In addition, mothers had been trained to bottle feed their children rather than breast feed, which did not impart the same immunity protections, he said.

According to Wright, since the Iraq conflict started, fewer children were protected from diseases that they could be immunised against and more children were malnourished, a factor exacerbating respiratory infections and diarrhoeal disease among infants.

“I am scared, because I lost my previous baby,” Zainab Hadi, a 25 year-old mother, told IRIN. “I feel this baby will die too, because he has the same symptoms.” Hadi’s baby was hospitalised as he started with diarrhoea and vomiting.

Doctors were giving him antibiotics for his spleen and abdomen, but they were not sure why he was sick, al-Zubaidi said.

She added that antibiotics and other drugs were sometimes not available. “Even though they are cheap, many families cannot afford them”.

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