By CHRISTABEL LIGAMI Special Correspondent
Posted Saturday, April 13 2013 at 18:40
IN SUMMARY
- East Africa is wrestling with an unfinished health agenda of infectious diseases, which has hit young children the hardest despite falling mortality rates.
Nearly all the East African countries have experienced a decrease in mortality rates over the past two decades as lifespan improves, a new report shows.
However, new findings from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors, a collaborative project led by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington, indicate that East Africa is wrestling with an unfinished health agenda of infectious diseases, which has hit young children the hardest despite falling mortality rates.
In Uganda, child mortality rates have gone down significantly since 1990, especially for the youngest age groups. “Uganda’s child mortality rates for those under the age of five, especially girls, have declined by 73 per cent,” said the report.
The declining number in the mortality rates according to the report is as a result of heavy investment in health and having a functional health system for the prevention of child deaths like bed nets for malaria prevention; vaccines and adequate treatment for pneumonia; improved water sanitation/hygiene for prevention of diarrhoea and treatment for tuberculosis.
In many East African countries, children who survive past the age of five are plagued by deadly ailments as young adults.
The number of Kenyans aged 20 to 24 who died annually tripled between 1990 and 2010, fuelled by dramatic rises in all the top causes of death — including HIV/Aids, maternal disorders, malaria, lower respiratory infections, and tuberculosis.
The report analysis shows that life expectancy in Rwanda was extended by nearly 15 years between 1990 and 2010, but many of those years were not lived in good health.
In Rwanda, average life expectancy increased from 49.7 years in 1990 to 64.6 years in 2010, a gigantic leap. Yet only 54.8 of those 64.6 years were lived in good health. This pattern is replicated throughout the region.
Much of this increased life expectancy is due to the dramatic progress that has been made in preventing child deaths. Indeed, much of sub-Saharan Africa has made significant gains in the fight against infectious diseases and maternal health problems.
In Ethiopia, more than 180,000 children aged one to four died in 1990; by 2010, that number was down to less than 70,000.