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Get the facts about the health challenges that impoverished children and their families are facing.
• Malaria kills approximately 1 million children per year, many of them under age 5 and most of them in sub-Saharan Africa.
• In developing countries, one in every six infants is not immunized against tuberculosis.
• While the number of deaths due to measles fell dramatically between 2000 and 2007, one in every four children in developing countries is not immunized against measles.
• Only 55 percent of the world's infants are fully immunized against hepatitis B.
• Only 69 percent of newborns are protected against tetanus.
• Malaria, together with HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis, is one of the major public health challenges undermining development in the poorest countries in the world.
• There are 1.8 million diarrheal-related deaths per year among young children.
• Children under age 5 account for less than 10 percent of the world's population, but suffer from 40 percent of the diseases attributed to environmental factors.
• Acute respiratory infections annually kill an estimated 2 million children under the age of 5.
• About 1.8 million people, most of whom are children, die annually of food-borne diseases.
• Approximately 37 percent of deaths among children under 5 — 9.7 million worldwide in 2006 — occur in the first month of life.
Sources: www.malarianomore, www.who.int, www.unicef.org, www.ncseonline.org, www.un.org
