Globally, about 16,000 children under the age of five die each day—most from preventable conditions associated with poverty. This staggering number means that more than 11 children die unnecessarily every single minute.
While illnesses such as the common cold, pneumonia, and diarrhea are easy to treat in the developed world, for children in the world’s poorest families, these conditions often prove fatal. Other diseases, such as malaria and parasitic infections, disproportionately affect the global poor. Among victims of these diseases, children under the age of five have the highest mortality rates and the slowest recovery times.
Economic inequality is directly tied to childhood mortality rate: the poorer a child is, the more likely she is to die from a preventable health condition. According to the 2015 UN Millennium Development Goals Report, in developing regions, the under-five mortality rate is two times higher for children from the poorest families than it is for those born into the richest families.
Children living in the poorest parts of the world are also dispropor- tionately affected by diseases associated with poverty. In 2015, half of under-five deaths occurred in Sub-Saharan Africa, and nearly a third occurred in Southern Asia.
At The Life You Can Save, we envision a world where all families will be able to celebrate their little boy’s first birthday, or their five-year old daughter’s first day at school. These are milestones that all families, no matter where in the world they reside, should be able to look forward to and cherish. Our recommended nonprofit organizations work in diverse development areas, but all are united by the fact that the work that they do for the world’s neediest children is evidence-backed, rigorously tested, and proven to get money, supplies, and services to the children who need help the most.