Child mortality rates are spiraling in parts of Asia because of financially crippled public health care systems, a U.N. report said.

An increasing reliance on privatized health care and the stripping back of state hospitals was endangering the health of thousands of mothers and children, a senior United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) official said.

"An aggressive increase in privatization and a system where the user has to fully pay for health care means that the poor tend to drop out of the picture," Dr Steve Atwood, UNICEF'S Regional Adviser for Health and Nutrition stated.

"People tend to view health as an income-generating activity that doesn't require government funding. This unfortunately divides people into those who can pay for the service and those who can't," he said.

Atwood pointed to the dramatic increase in child deaths in Cambodia since the country began a privatization drive.

UNICEF estimates that one in seven children die in Cambodia before they reach the age of five and has listed the country among the top 10 that have failed to make a dent in child mortality.

The others are Iraq, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Swaziland, Kenya, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

Atwood accused private health services of "sponging" much-need resources away from public facilities already devastated by cutbacks.

"We see the same problem in the West. When the private schools, private hospitals crop up, they sponge resources away from the public sector. The best doctors, the best equipment, the best facilities," he said.

While raising concerns about the "unregulated privatization" drives in China, Vietnam, Mongolia and Cambodia, Atwood praised Malaysia for slashing its child mortality rate by eight per cent since 1990.

Political commitment to state health care was the key to Malaysia's success and the investment had helped the country sustain its economic boom, he said.

UNICEF's assessment comes during the launch of a new report on global child mortality rates.

The Progress for Children report says more than half of the countries in East Asia and the Pacific will fail to meet the UN Millennium Development Goal of reducing child mortality by two-thirds by 2015.

The UN agency called on governments to invest greater resources in state health services, especially in rural communities where it said access was woefully inadequate.

Reference Source 89
October 8, 2004

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