Todo Acerca de Leslie McKinney

As populations grow and hunger and poverty increase, so has child mortality. Millions of children under the age of five die each year from malnutrition, lack of health care and sanitation, and other factors such as war. The Millennium Development Goal (MDG) is to end preventable deaths of newborns and children under five years of age to under 12 deaths per 1,000 live births by 2030. Fortunately, the mortality rate has dropped 53 percent since 1990. In 1990, there were an estimated 91 deaths for every 1,000 live births. More recently, in 2015, there are an estimated 43 deaths for every 1,000 live births. This is the estimated equivalent to having from from 12.7 million deaths per year to 5.9 million. This is according to a child mortality report of 2015. Child mortality is like a plague, not only for the families of the world, but most importantly for the mothers. There is a consistent and solid trend that has been taken note of in studying child mortality around the world. This trend has to do with family size and the level of child mortality. It has been generally noted that the larger the average family size of a country, the higher the rate of child mortality. In third-world/developing countries, where there is a lack of health care or another decisive factor calling for more working hands, families tend to be large, with more children per couple. These families of five or six children are estimated to have much higher rates of child mortality than smaller families generally populating first-world/developed countries. What does this mean? I think this indicates that various issues can be addressed at the same time. With family planning—along with corresponding improvement of living standards to eliminate the necessity of large families—families in developing countries can be reduced to around two children per spouse; this in turn is assumed to decrease child mortality; furthermore, if women’s roles in the family are less concentrated on birthing more children, they will have more freedom to pursue other objectives, such as education, jobs and projects in their communities. It is not necessarily a linear process; if the issues we identify in society are addressed simultaneously, holistically, the improvement in society as a whole—as well as in its relationship with nature— can more easily be facilitated.