Chinmaya Vidyalaya: Social Issue

"Some 21,000 children die everyday around the world."

This is equivalent to:

1 child dying every 4 seconds.
14 children dying every minute.
A 2011 Libya conflict-scale death toll every day.
A 2010 Haiti earthquake occuring every 10 days.
A 2004 Asian Tsunami occuring every 11 days.
An Iraq-scale death toll every 19-46 days.
Just under 7.6 million children dying every year.
Some 92 million children dying between 2000 and 2010

The silent killers are poverty, hunger, easily preventable diseases and illnesses, and other related causes. Despite the scale of this daily/ongoing catastrophe, it rarely manages to achieve, much less sustain, prime-time, headline coverage.

Of the 7.6 million child deaths(under-5years)in 2010,the vast majority occured in just two regions:

The term "Children" in this context means infants under the age of 5.The tragedy is therefore even worse if older children,adults,and the elderly are to be considered.

The approximate number of deaths in those 10 years is calculated by averaging the deaths per year for known figures in that range and multiplying by the 11 years that cover 2000-2010,which gives a total of 92 million deaths.

Given the population is increasing,the percent of deaths being reduced over those 11 years seems small (0.16% of world population in 2000 and 0.11% of population in 2010).

Taking a longer term view,since 1960(when child mortality numbers were first being recorded)the annual number of child deaths has more than halved,from around 20 million in 1960 to just 7.6 million in 2010.

In addition,given the population in 1960 was 3 billion whereas 2010 was about 6.8 billion this means that there has been a six-fold improvement in saving lives of children from a percentage basis.That is,although population has increased,the number of child deaths has reduced even more.