Kazakhstan on track to achieve Millennium Development Goal to reduce child mortality | WPN World People News

Members of the United Nations Inter-Agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (IGME) visited Kazakhstan on 22-25 June 2013 to analyze infant and child mortality estimates in the country.

The preliminary estimate of UN IGME indicates that the under-five mortality rate of Kazakhstan declined by 65% from 54.1 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1990 to 18.7 in 2012. The data show that Kazakhstan is on track to achieve the Millennium Development Goal target to reduce the under-five mortality rate by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015.

The mission’s goal was to assess Kazakhstan’s vital statistics, including from the civil registration system, and national surveys and censuses, and the accuracy of these data to measure the positive effects of the health system to reduce infant and child mortality rates in the country.

The UN experts visited the perinatal centre #1 of Astana city, National Scientific Maternity and Childhood Centre, Republican Health Development Centre and the district departments of the civil registration offices in order to understand how national statistics are collected and processed within an e-gov system. The UN mission was also provided with information on the infant and under-five mortality rates broken down by region and an analysis of trends over time.

During the visit the UN experts had a number of meetings with the staff of the Ministries of Health, Justice and State Agency of Statistics.

At the concluding meeting chaired by Salidat Kairbekova, Minister of Health, the international experts shared their preliminary positive conclusions on the assessment of registering infant and child mortality in Kazakhstan and praised the Government’s serious efforts to reduce infant and child mortality rates and improve the data collection system.

The child mortality rate is also one of the indicators of the Global Competitiveness Index of the World Economic Forum.

IGME is a collaborative group between UNICEF, WHO, the World Bank and the United Nations Population Division to harmonize country-level estimates of infant and child mortality. Representatives of the four agencies meet once a year to review country data and arrive at consensus estimates, which are then published by UNICEF on behalf of the IGME in September.

Source: United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund