For the first time this century, child deaths under age 5 will likely rise. Why?

"One of the crowning achievements in global health is at risk of coming undone. Between 2000 and 2020, the number of children who die before they hit their 5th birthday dropped by half from nearly 10 million deaths a year to under 5 million deaths a year. What brought about this remarkable progress? It's the result of many improvements in global health, including the widespread rollout of childhood vaccinations."

"Estimates suggest 2025 will be the first year this century that child deaths have gone up instead of down. In 2024, 4.6 million children died before hitting age 5. That number is projected to rise by just over 200,000 to an estimated 4.8 million children in 2025, according to modeling work done by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington in Seattle."

""It's horrific," says Brooke Nichols, an associate professor of global health at Boston University, who was not involved in this research but has done her own work on estimating the impact of the drop in foreign aid. She says the methodology used by IHME looks sound and in line with many of the other estimates including one published in July in the medical journal The Lancet. The IHME estimate "looks relatively conservative in terms of estimates," she says."

Child deaths before age five fell from nearly 10 million annually in 2000 to under 5 million by 2020, largely driven by broad improvements in global health and widespread childhood vaccination. Decline slowed during the COVID-19 pandemic as health systems were disrupted. Estimates based on modeling project that child mortality will rise from 4.6 million in 2024 to about 4.8 million in 2025, marking the first year this century when under-five deaths increase. Available mortality drivers such as malaria, diarrhea, and preterm birth complications have not substantially changed, and limited timely global mortality data required model-based projections.

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