May 8, 2007 2:26 PM
- Text
Suffer The Children
Grim tidings today from London and a new report that tells us something else about the tragedy that is Iraq:
The chance that an Iraqi child will live beyond age 5 has plummeted faster than anywhere else in the world since 1990, according to a report released Tuesday that placed the country last in its child survival rankings.The report also says: "Among industrialized countries, Iceland had the best child survival rate, and Romania the worst. The United States placed 26th, tied with Croatia, Estonia and Poland. Nearly seven children die for every 1,000 live births in the United States."One in eight Iraqi children died of disease or violence before reaching their fifth birthday in 2005, according to the report by Save the Children, which said Iraq ranked last because it had made the least progress toward improving child survival rates.(AP Photo/Ali Abed)
Iraq's mortality rate has soared by 150 percent since 1990. Even before the latest war, Iraq was plagued by electricity shortages, a lack of clean water and too few hospitals.
The publication, which used data from 1990-2005, also determined that gains in survival rates in some of the world's poorest countries — including Botswana, Zimbabwe and Swaziland — were declining.
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