The twin-island state has been praised for its efforts and has been identified as one of the Caribbean nations that are moving in the right direction. In a report released on Thursday, UNICEF confirmed that St. Kitts & Nevis, along with nearby Antigua & Barbuda, has been able to significantly cut their under 5 mortality rate by over 2/3 in the period between 1990 and 2011.
UNICEF revealed that the rate for St Kitts & Nevis was reduced from 28 to 7 over those two decades.
In comparison, other countries, such as Antigua & Barbuda’s their saw under-five mortality rate dropped from 27 in 1990 to 8 in 2011, while other sub-regional countries cut their rates by between one-fifth and one-third and rates range from 28 deaths per 1,000 live births in Trinidad & Tobago to 12 in Dominica.
The data released by UNICEF and the UN Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation show that the number of children under the age of five dying globally fell from nearly 12 million in 1990 to an estimated 6.9 million in 2011.
The success of the efforts of these countries was revealed in the 2012 progress report on Committing to Child Survival: A Promise Renewed examines trends in child mortality estimates since 1990, and shows that major reductions have been made in under-five mortality rates in all regions and diverse countries.