For Health of Young People, a Mixed Picture

This is the VOA Special English Development Report.

UNICEF says the death rate for children under the age of five has fallen twenty-eight percent since nineteen ninety. Experts credit the drop to improvements in public health measures. These include vaccination campaigns and the use of bed nets chemically treated to kill mosquitoes that spread malaria.

Still, Brian Hansford at the United Nations Children's Fund says more work remains.

BRIAN HANSFORD: "Certainly the good news is that the rate of deaths of children under five years of age continued to decline in two thousand eight. The absolute number of child deaths declined to an estimated eight-point-eight million from twelve-point-five million in nineteen ninety. Compared to nineteen ninety, ten thousand fewer children are dying each day. The bad news is that an annual death total of eight-point-eight million is still a tragedy, and so there's still much to do."

One of the U.N. Millennium Development Goals is to reduce the under-five death rate by two-thirds by two thousand fifteen. One country that could reach this goal is Malawi. In nineteen ninety, there were two hundred twenty-five deaths for every one thousand live births. The estimate for last year was one hundred deaths.

UNICEF spokesman Brian Hansford says pneumonia and diarrhea remain the world's two greatest killers of young children. Ninety-three percent of the deaths happen in Africa and Asia.

A separate new study looked at deaths worldwide in young people age ten to twenty-four. It found that ninety-seven percent happen in low and middle income countries. And two out of every five are the result of injuries and violence.

Professor George Patton at Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne, Australia, was the lead author.

GEORGE PATTON: "In high income countries such as the United States, the U.K. and Australia, death rates are around forty-five per hundred thousand per year. In sub-Saharan Africa we have the highest death rates in the world, and they are around seven times higher than that."

The study found that worldwide, more than two and a half million people age ten to twenty-four died in two thousand four. Nearly two-thirds were in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia.

Conditions related to pregnancy and childbirth were a leading cause of deaths in females. But for both sexes combined, the leading killer in this age group was traffic accidents. Ten percent of all the deaths were blamed on road injuries.

Next came suicide and violence. Also in the top ten causes were infections, including tuberculosis and H.I.V./AIDS, as well as drowning and fire-related deaths. The study appears in the journal The Lancet.

And that's the VOA Special English Development Report, written by June Simms. I'm Steve Ember.

这里是VOA特别英语发展报道。

联合国儿童基金会称，自1990年以来，五岁以下儿童的死亡率下降了28%。专家将这种现象归功于公共卫生措施的改善，包括疫苗接种运动，以及用化学方法处理蚊帐来消灭传播疟疾的蚊虫。

然而，联合国儿童基金会的Brian Hansford表示，将来的任务仍然非常艰巨。

Brian Hansford：“当然，好消息是，2008年，五岁以下儿童死亡率继续下降。儿童死亡的绝对数字从1990年的1250万下降到现在的880万。与1990年相比，每天夭折的儿童减少1万名。坏消息是，每年有880万儿童死亡仍然是一个巨大的灾难，所以任务依然非常艰巨。”

联合国千年发展目标的其中一项就是，截止到2015年，五岁以下儿童死亡率降低三分之二。其中一个达到该目标的国家是马拉威。1990年，每1000名新出生儿童中，有225人死亡。而据估计，去年仅为100人。

联合国儿童基金会发言人Brian Hansford表示，肺炎和痢疾仍然是世界上两个最大的幼童杀手。其中，93%的幼童死亡发生在非洲和亚洲。

一项新的独立研究调查了世界范围内10至24岁年轻人的死亡状况。研究发现，97%的死亡事件发生在中低收入国家，其中五分之二的人死于受伤或暴力。

澳大利亚墨尔本皇家儿童医院的George Patton教授是这项研究的首席作者。

George Patton：“在高收入国家，例如美国，英国和澳大利亚，每年的死亡率为每十万人中45人死亡。撒哈拉以南非洲的死亡率为世界最高，比高收入国家的死亡率高出7倍。”

该研究发现，2004年，全世界有250万10至24岁的年轻人死亡。几乎三分之二出现在撒哈拉以南非洲和东南亚。

与怀孕和分娩有关的问题是导致女性死亡的主要原因。但是男女综合来说，该年轻群体的主要死亡原因是交通事故。所有死亡中的10%是由于道路伤亡。

下一个死亡原因就是自杀和暴力。位于前十位的还有传染病，包括肺结核和艾滋病，以及溺水和与火灾相关死亡。该研究发表在《柳叶刀》期刊上。