Thursday, August 31, 2006
Cambodia has made significant gains in improving the health of its children in the last five years, the UN children's agency said.
The gains were seen across a range of measures, including a fall in the number of childhood deaths, improved child nutrition and a shift by women towards smaller families, UNICEF said on Thursday.
The number of infant deaths per 1,000 births dropped to 65 in 2004, from 95 in 2000. The improvement was also seen among children younger than five years old, with the death rate dropping to 83 per 1,000, from 124, over the same period.
The survey of 14,534 households nationwide also found Cambodians were having fewer children, with an average of 3.4 per woman last year against 4.0 children per woman in 2000.
Many more women were choosing to breastfeed their children. Sixty percent of infants under six months old were exclusively breastfed last year, against 10 percent in 2000, UNICEF said.
Improvements were also seen in nutrition of young children.
"The percentage of young children too short for their age declined from 45 percent to to 37 percent, and those too thin for their height declined from 15 percent to seven percent," UNICEF said.
The findings were based on a survey conducted jointly by the National Institute of Public Health and the National Institute of Statistics from September 2005 to March 2006.
Cambodia's health system was shattered after nearly three decades of war, which ended in 1998.
Rife corruption, along with tiny salaries paid to doctors and nurses, mean many take second jobs and so rebuilding is an uphill battle. — AFP Cambodia has made significant gains in improving the health of its children in the last five years, the UN children's agency said.
