Families have benefited from a health system that offers prematurely born and severely sick children a significantly better chance of survival than it did 10 years ago.

The most important recommendation was to improve resuscitation of newborns, through training and equipment. Since 2015, almost 650 doctors, midwives and nurses have been trained on newborn child resuscitation and care.

Over the past decade, Kyrgyzstan has seen a steady decline in the rate of child mortality. During this time, UNICEF has worked with the Ministry of Health to upgrade the skills of health workers, modernize equipment and organize hospital processes and referral systems better.

Kyrgyzstan is one of 62 countries worldwide that reached the Millennium Development Goal of reducing child mortality by more than two thirds. In 2007, mortality among children under 5 in Kyrgyzstan was 36 per 1,000 live births. By 2015, it had dropped to 21. During the same time period, infant mortality dropped from 32 to 19 for every 1,000 births and newborn mortality decreased from 19 to 12 deaths per 1,000 live births.

Read the full article on infant mortality rates by Sven G. Simonsen at UNICEF