The infant mortality rate in Brazil, which consistently went down since 1990, started going up in 2016. It is believed that the rate for 2017 will also be higher than the 2015 rate. Both the Zika epidemic and the country's economic recession have been highlighted by the Ministry of Health as causes for the rising infant mortality rate.
WHO and UNICEF today issued new ten-step guidance to increase support for breastfeeding in health facilities that provide maternity and newborn services. Breastfeeding all babies for the first 2 years would save the lives of more than 820 000 children under age 5 annually.
The U.N. children's agency UNICEF said it was seeing clear signs of a growing malnutrition crisis in Venezuela, but it lacked data to give precise information and to tackle the problem effectively.
UNICEF welcomed UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ announcement that Henrietta H. Fore will succeed Anthony Lake as UNICEF Executive Director when his term ends on 31 December 2017.
Some 600 million children – or 1 in 4 children worldwide – will be living in areas with extremely limited water resources by 2040, according to a UNICEF report released on World Water Day, 22 March.
Almost four million children in Argentina are poor and 8.5% live in extreme poverty, according to a report from UNICEF which measures multidimensional poverty which considers 28 indicators such as nutrition, access to healthcare, exposure to violence, among other more traditional references.
Lack of progress on sanitation threatens to undermine the child survival and health benefits from gains in access to safe drinking water, warn WHO and UNICEF in a report tracking access to drinking water and sanitation against the Millennium Development Goals.
The world is closer than ever to being able to wipe out polio, international experts said, with zero cases of the crippling disease recorded across all of Africa this year and fewer than 25 globally.
As the perils of climate change increasingly threaten the planet, the international community must unite in “a spirit of urgent cooperation” to address the many water-related challenges facing humanity, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon declared on Sunday.
Latin America and the Caribbean have the largest share of homicides among children and adolescents in the world, revealed a UNICEF report released yesterday. According to the study, in 2012 alone, “more than 25,000 homicide victims in the region were below the age of 20 — representing about one quarter of all homicide victims worldwide.”