Sierra Leone tops global child mortality tables

A NEWBORN in Sierra Leone has the lowest chance in the world of surviving until age five, and the prospects are almost as bad for children in Angola and Afghanistan, according to a UN report released last night.

In 2006, almost 9.7 million children died worldwide before their fifth birthdays, mostly from preventable causes such as diarrhoea, malaria or malnutrition, the UN Children’s Fund said in its annual report.

More than 26,000 children under the age of five die each day on average.