Asked by: Ian Liddell-Grainger (Conservative - Bridgwater and West Somerset)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what the three most common causes of global child mortality were in each of the last five years.
Answered by Nick Hurd
According to the latest estimates by the World Health Organisation (WHO) of the 5.9 million deaths in children under five that occurred in 2015 about half were caused by infectious diseases.
The three main killers in 2015 were; pneumonia (17 percent), preterm birth complications (16 percent) and neonatal intrapartum- related complications (11 percent). Others included; diarrhoea (8 percent), neonatal sepsis (7 percent) and malaria (5 percent). These causes of death have remained consistent over the last five years, despite an overall reduction of deaths worldwide. Almost half of all under-five deaths had malnutrition as an underlying cause and more than 80 percent of newborn deaths (deaths in the first month of life) occur among newborn infants of low birth weight in the highest burden settings.
Given the multifaceted nature of child health DFID promotes a multi-sectoral approach to address causes of child mortality. This includes supporting interventions to address the direct; the intermediate; and the underlying causes of death. Examples include large (over £1.32 bn from 2011-15) financial contributions to GAVI, the global vaccine alliance, as well as more specific programmes to reduce childhood malnutrition, provide better care for newborns and promote clean water and sanitation. Our GAVI contribution has immunised 67.1m children. Other direct programmes to tackle child mortality have saved the lives of over 200,000 lives of children between 1 month and 5 years of age in the last five years. Many countries have seen dramatic changes for example, Ethiopia experienced a drop in child mortality of two thirds since 1990.
Asked by: Ian Liddell-Grainger (Conservative - Bridgwater and West Somerset)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what information her Department holds on the number of child mortalities attributable to infections caused by (a) lack of access to safe water and (b) unclean environments of each of the last five years.
Answered by Nick Hurd
The most recent estimates from WHO are that diarrhoea caused by inadequate water, sanitation and hygiene results in 842,000 deaths each year in low and middle income countries. Of these, 502,000 deaths are due to inadequate and unsafe drinking water, 280,000 deaths are due to inadequate sanitation and 297,000 are due to inadequate hygiene. WHO indicate that 361,000 of these deaths each year are among children under-five. This equates to nearly 1,000 unnecessary deaths in children under-five every day. WHO has identified a range of other diseases linked to inadequate water sanitation and hygiene but has not provided recent estimates of the number of deaths caused by these infections. These diseases include infections such as trachoma and malaria.
DFID reached over 62 million people with water, sanitation and/or hygiene in the five years to 2014/15. We are currently formulating our new portfolio to deliver on the UK government’s commitment to help a further 60 million people get access to clean water and sanitation by 2020.
Asked by: Ian Liddell-Grainger (Conservative - Bridgwater and West Somerset)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what research her Department has conducted or commissioned on the link between poor sanitation and associated hygiene practices and maternal and newborn health and survival.
Answered by Nick Hurd
DFID is providing £16 million over 8 years for SHARE (Sanitation and Hygiene Applied Research for Equity), a research consortium led by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. SHARE has funded five key studies which have significantly advanced our understanding of this critical issue and put water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) firmly on the global maternal & newborn health (MNH) agenda. Research includes a systematic review establishing the impact of WASH on maternal mortality and a cohort study in Odisha, India that has provided the first rigorous evidence that poor sanitation during pregnancy is associated with an increased risk of preterm birth, low birthweight, spontaneous abortion and still birth
DFID is also providing £7.2 million of funding to support the Sanitation, Hygiene Infant Nutrition Efficacy (SHINE) trial currently underway in Zimbabwe. The trial aims to prove and describe the causal relationship between sanitation and child stunting.