Our children's future

The global under-five mortality rate fell to 39 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2018, down from 76 in 2000 - a 49% decline.

The same report also states:

Despite advances in fighting childhood illnesses, infectious diseases remain a leading cause of death for children under the age of 5, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia.

Pneumonia remains the leading cause of death globally among children under the age of 5, accounting for 15% of deaths. Diarrhoea (8%) and malaria (5%), together with pneumonia, accounted for almost a third of global under-five deaths in 2018.

The report also warns that:

Malnourished children, particularly those with severe acute malnutrition, have a higher risk of death from these common childhood illnesses. Nutrition-related factors contribute to about 45 per cent of deaths in children under 5 years of age.

.The estimates also show vast inequalities worldwide, with women and children in sub-Saharan Africa facing a higher risk of death than in all other regions. The level of maternal deaths is nearly 50 times higher for women in sub-Saharan Africa compared to high-income countries. In 2018, 1 in 13 children in sub-Saharan Africa died before their fifth birthday - this is 15 times higher than the risk a child faces in Europe, where just 1 in 196 children aged less than 5 die.

We must provide universal reformed education

Illiteracy in the less developed countries exceeded that of the developed ones by a factor of ten in 1970. By 2000, this factor had increased to approximately 20. As our economies become more knowledge-based, education has become more and more important.

Besides universal education, educational reforms are urgently needed, particularly in the teaching of history. As it is taught today, history is a chronicle of power struggles and war, told from a biased national standpoint. Our own race or religion is superior; our own country is always heroic and in the right.

We urgently need to replace this indoctrination in chauvinism by a reformed view of history, where the slow development of human culture is described, giving adequate credit to all who have contributed.

The teaching of other topics, such as economics, should be reformed. Economics must be given both a social conscience and an ecological conscience. The mantra of growth must be abandoned, and the climate emergency must be addressed.