Osarenoma Uwaifo, the Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Health, disclosed this at a two-day annual symposium on experience sharing on Integrated Community Case Management of Childhood illness (ICCM) on Tuesday in Abuja.
Mr. Osarenoma, who was represented by Bose Adeniran, Head, Child Health Division, said that the data was made known by the UN Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (IGME).
According to him, Nigeria contributes 11 per cent of total global deaths of under-five, ranking second on the list of countries with burdens of child mortality.
He said one in every eight children born in Nigeria die before their fifth birthday.
He said that pneumonia, diarrhoea and malaria represented an estimated 58 percent of under-five deaths with malnutrition underlying about 50 per cent of them.
He said that majority of these childhood deaths can be prevented with high impact interventions and treated with very low-cost medicines which most of these children living in hard to reach areas do not have access to.
Mr. Osarenoma urged state governments to buy into the initiative in order to curb childhood deaths.
The Minister of Health, Isaac Adewole, who was represented by Adebimpe Adebiyi, Director, Family Health Department in the ministry, said that government was working on scaling up of the evidence-based intervention of the wellbeing of children,Premium Times reports.
