MELBOURNE, May 30 – Australia is one of the best countries in the world to be a child, a UN report has found, but its immunisation rates lag behind parts of the developing world.
The Australian Associated Press said the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has released its State of the World’s Children report for 2013, focusing this year on the fate of children with a disability around the globe.
The report found under-five mortality rates in Australia had dropped steadily over the four decades to 2011, from 21 per 1,000 children born to five.
That put Australia well ahead of the east Asia and Pacific average under-five mortality rate of 20 per 1,000 children born in 2011.
Australian children also fared comparatively well when it came to education, exploitation and poverty indicators.
But immunisation coverage in Australia was only 94 per cent for measles and 92 per cent for diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, polio, hepatitis B and haemophilus influenzae.
This put Australian vaccination rates ahead of global averages, but behind rates enjoyed by countries including Bangladesh, Eritrea, Kazakhstan and Libya.
The UNICEF report says around the world, children with disabilities continue to face discrimination, poverty, limited education access and even infanticide.
“In Madagascar … even among the presidents of parents’ associations, 48 per cent believed, mistakenly, that disability is contagious.”
UNICEF has called for greater global efforts to register children with disabilities to improve data collection “and thereby render them visible”.
The children’s fund also advocates increased pressure on countries that are not yet party to conventions on child rights, and immediate measures to reduce over-reliance on institutional care for children with disabilities.
– BERNAMA
