The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said an estimated 395,072 babies will be born around the world on New Year’s Day and called on nations to meet every newborn’s right to health and survival.
UNICEF said a quarter of the newborns will be born in South Asia alone. UNICEF said in cities around the world, revelers would welcome not only the New Year with great festivities but also their newest and tiniest residents.
UNICEF said Fiji in the Pacific would most likely deliver 2019’s first baby and the United States, its last. Globally, over half of these births are estimated to take place in eight countries: India (69,944), China (44,940), Nigeria (25,685), Pakistan (15,112), Indonesia (13,256), The United States of America (11,086), The Democratic Republic of Congo (10,053), and Bangladesh (8,428).
However, UNICEF said many babies would not make it past their first day. In 2017, about one million babies died the day they were born, and 2.5 million in just their first month of life. Among those children, most died from preventable causes such as premature birth, complications during delivery, and infections like sepsis and pneumonia, a violation of their basic right to survival.
2019 marks the 30th anniversary of the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and UNICEF said it would be commemorating the occasion with worldwide events throughout the year. It said over the past three decades, the world has seen remarkable progress in child survival, cutting the number of children worldwide who die before their fifth birthday by more than half. But there has been slower progress for newborns, with babies dying in the first month accounting for 47 percent of all deaths among children under five.
Through its “Every Child Alive” campaign UNICEF called for immediate investment to deliver affordable, quality health care solutions for every mother and newborn. These include a steady supply of clean water and electricity at health facilities, the presence of a skilled health attendant during birth, ample supplies and medicines to prevent and treat complications during pregnancy, delivery and birth, and empowered adolescent girls and women who can demand better quality of health services~UNICEF
