The issue
DFID is committed to achieving the Millennium Development Goals including Millennium Development Goal 4 to reduce child mortality.
Significant progress has been made in reducing child deaths globally in recent decades. There has been a drop in the number of deaths in children under five from 12.4 million in 1990 to 8.1 million in 2009.
This means that, in 2009, 12,000 fewer children died each day than in 1990.
However, progress has not been spread evenly across the world. While some countries have made great strides, advancement has been slower in sub-Saharan Africa which continues to have the highest under-five mortality rate.
One in eight children still dies there before his fifth birthday.
This region along with Southern Asia are making insufficient progress to meet the Millennium Development Goal to reduce the under-five mortality rate by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015.
Although the picture varies from country to country, the majority of child deaths are caused by a minority of conditions. The most important are infectious diseases such as pneumonia, diarrhoea and malaria which together account for 41% of deaths.
These deaths are only a small proportion of the two billion cases of diarrhoea and 150 million cases of pneumonia in under fives every year. Most of these illnesses and deaths are preventable with improved healthcare, vaccinations, and timely, correct treatment.
The proportion of deaths that occur in the first month on life - known as neonatal deaths - has increased to 41% of all child deaths. This is because progress in saving newborn lives has been slower than for that of older children.
Yet these causes are only the tip of the iceberg. For instance, under-nutrition contributes to 55% of all child deaths. Other intermediate causes such as lack of girls' education, poor access to water, sanitation and hygiene facilities, plus underlying causes such as poverty must also be considered.
Our response
Given the complex nature of child health, we promote a multi-sectoral approach to address causes of child mortality and ill health. This includes supporting interventions at three levels: to address the direct, the intermediate, and the underlying causes of death.
We use our financial, technical and political support at global, regional and country levels to advance progress in child health.
Support is tailored to meet country level needs. We try to fill gaps in the health service rather than overhaul it, based on what we know works.
We focus on critical gaps in healthcare such as family planning, antenatal care, skilled attendance at delivery, children sleeping under insecticide treated bednets and malaria treatment.
These gaps are reflected in our current priority areas such as malaria and reproductive, maternal and neonatal health, all of which have major implications for child health.
Malaria is among the top child killers and by setting ambitious targets to address this disease the impact on child health will be significant.
Given that neonatal deaths have fallen less quickly than mortality at other ages in childhood, we have responded by renewing our focus on this issue.
We have made a number of commitments, for example halving the number of child deaths from malaria in ten high burden countries and saving 250,000 newborn lives.
Other commitments such as access to family planning and preventing maternal deaths also have important implications for child health, as do our programmes addressing under-nutrition, girls’ education, water, sanitation and hygiene.
Find out more about what is being done and where on our country pages.