Child mortality in South Africa - we have lost touch

Reducing child mortality is, appropriately, one of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for reducing poverty and inequality in the world. The target for this goal is to reduce child mortality by 2015 by two-thirds of the rate in 1990. Monitoring child mortality rates, however, is posing a challenge for low- and middle-income countries. Estimates that many countries, particularly in Africa, use to track progress in meeting this goal have to be extrapolated from earlier empirical data, since there are no up-to-date data. Despite great strides that have been made in improving population health statistics, South Africa is unfortunately no exception. The most recent reasonably reliable estimates of child mortality for South Africa are for the mid-1990s, in other words 10 years out of date