Every day, 2,300 children under 5 years old and 145 women of child-bearing age die in Nigeria, making the country the second-largest contributor to the under-5 and maternal mortality rate in the world, according to UNICEF statistics. This situation is particularly painful since most of those deaths could be prevented with simple, low-cost interventions.
Although recent trends show that the country has made progress in reducing infant and under-5 mortality rates, it will be unable to achieve the Millennium Development Goals of reducing child mortality by two-thirds by 2015.
At the same time, deaths of newborn babies — the majority of which occur in the first week of life — represent 25 percent of the deaths of children under 5.