Child health in the Western Pacific

Children represent the future, and ensuring their healthy growth and development ought to be a prime concern of all societies. The vast majority of child deaths are due to neonatal causes, pneumonia, diarrhoea and malnutrition.

There has been significant progress in child survival in the Western Pacific Region. The estimated mortality rate of children under the age of five was reduced by 65% between 1990 and 2011 and the estimated total number of deaths among children under the age of five years decreased by almost 80%. However, around 1052 children under the age of five still die everyday.