There is a saying in Bangladesh “শিশুরাই জাতির ভব্বিশ্যত”. Save the Children’s annual State of the World’s Mothers for 2007 indicates that impressive progress in cutting down the infant and child mortality rates and placed us well over India and Pakistan among 60 developing nations in this regard. In fact, the percentage drop in the mortality rates is much higher than South Asian average of thirty percent. If things progess at this rate, Bangladesh is sure to have a positive contribution to the Millennium Development Goals that targets to reduce child mortality rate by two thirds by 2015.

Bangladesh – with a GNI of $2,090 – has made
significant progress in saving the lives of infants and
children over the past 15 years. The infant mortality rate
(deaths in the first year of life) has been cut 46 percent
and the child mortality rate is down 51 percent. In recent
decades, Bangladesh has boosted girls’ school enrollment
rates, improved the quality of education for girls and
promoted family planning. In 2005, Bangladesh was one
of only a handful of least developed countries to have
achieved gender parity in primary education, where nearly
every child, boy and girl alike, was enrolled in primary
school. Similarly, at 47 percent, Bangladesh has the
highest percentage of women using contraception of any
least developed country. These pioneering efforts have
led Bangladeshi couples to choose smaller, healthier
families (the average number of births per woman in
Bangladesh declined from 6.3 in the early 1970s to 3
today). While much progress is being made, 274,000
Bangladeshi children never see their fifth birthday,
and almost half are newborn babies in the first month
of life. To address this problem, the government of
Bangladesh, in partnership with Save the Children,
launched a major effort in 2001 to identify and address
the causes of newborn death and disease. Newborn health
has now been integrated into government policy and
training curricula for health-care providers. But much
more remains to be done. Less than 15 percent of
deliveries are attended by skilled health personnel, only
about a third of infants are exclusively breastfed for the
first six months, and only 20 percent seek treatment for
suspected pneumonia. In addition, nearly half of all
children under 5 are underweight for their age.