Somalia now has the world's highest mortality rate for children under the age of five, after years of chronic conflict and recurring drought.
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Men from southern Somalia offer funeral prayers for a dead child in Mogadishu on September 10, 2011.
In 2010, Somalia's child mortality rate stood at 180 deaths per 1,000 live births. That now ranks worst in the world, according to the latest data released by the UN Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation, CNN reported on Saturday.
“Even before this current crisis, one in six children was dying before their fifth birthday. Now we anticipate this number of deaths will be even greater,” UNICEF Representative in Somalia Rozanne Chorlton said.
She added, “There is no doubt that Somalia is one of the toughest places for a child to survive.”
Six areas in southern Somalia have been declared famine zones by the United Nations. They include the Lower Shabelle region, parts of Bakool and Middle Shabelle, the Bay region, and the settlements for internally displaced persons in the Afgoye corridor and Mogadishu.
According to UNICEF, 750,000 people are at imminent risk of death in central and south Somalia, and 1.5 million children need immediate humanitarian assistance -- including 336,000 children under the age of five who are acutely malnourished.
As of last year, less than a third of one-year-olds in Somalia were immunized against deadly vaccine-preventable diseases, over 70 per cent of the population lacked access to safe water, and just 3 out of 10 children of primary school age were enrolled in school.
“To make sure we save children's lives, we need a serious investment in Somalia's future to make sure that anything like the current crisis never happens again. Such investment needs to begin with children, who are always the first to suffer during times of famine and hardship,” Chorlton noted.
Somalia has been without a functioning government since 1991, when warlords overthrew former dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.
Strategically located in the Horn of Africa, Somalia remains one of the countries generating the highest number of refugees and internally displaced persons in the world.
