Country Far From MDGs

from All Africa

The East African Standard (Nairobi)

By Edith Fortunate
Nairobi

Kenya is among the sub-Saharan countries that are not likely to meet their Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by the 2015 deadline.

Mid-way to the set deadline, many countries in sub-Saharan Africa continue to register high child mortality rates.

Kenya is also among countries that may not reduce child mortality by two-thirds by 2015.

According to a new study, 'Progress towards the child mortality millennium development goal in urban sub-Saharan Africa', while urban population in Kenya increased at an annual rate of 7.2 per cent, the country's per capita Gross Domestic Product dropped annually by about 0.1 per cent between 1980 and 2000.

"Consequently, slightly more than half of households in Kenya's slums had access to piped water in 2003, compared to 87 paer cent in the early 1990s. Also, the proportion of urban children who were fully immunised dropped markedly from 76 per cent in 1993 to 48 per cent in 2003," the study stated.

Indeed, research has shown that children living in urban slums not only have poorer health outcomes, but also have higher chances of dying before the age of five compared to their counterparts living elsewhere. In Kenya, for instance, while other urban and rural areas recorded between 14-22 per cent increase in infant deaths, slums registered a 39 per cent increase.

Within slums, the document stated, immunisation rates were lower and dropped from 71 per cent to 43 per cent in the same period.