USELESS DEATHS Child-mortality rates in China and India are "alarmingly high," according to a UNICEF report
PARIS One French teenager in five suffers from hearing problems because of exposure to excessively loud volumes on personal stereos and in nightclubs and rock concerts. "We believe that between 10 and 20 percent of adolescents have damaged hearing. And that's not counting those who suffer from tinnitus and hyperacusis (oversensitivity to certain sounds)," Prof. Christian Huggonet, an acoustic engineer, told Le Figaro newspaper. "Company doctors have noticed an increase in poor hearing among young people applying for jobs in which a good ear is required. And suppliers of hearing aids all agree their clients are getting younger," he said. Conductors from several musical conservatories also describe recent problems in getting their players to distinguish and play nuances in sound in the quietest registers. One of the most serious problems is the standardization of sound "compression" in which weak signals are boosted to the level of stronger ones. The technique is now the norm in MP3 and other music formats popular with young people, according to Huggonet. "Once the ear has got accustomed to this kind of sound, it finds it very hard to return to sounds of weak intensity.… Compressed sound also creates stress and fatigue because there's no let-up till it stops," Huggonet said. Another fallout: "Young children who are used to watching cartoons with compressed sound can end up speaking in the same loud monotone way in which their ears have been trained."
BEIJING Child mortality among China's rural poor and its millions of migrants remains high despite overall improvements. The mortality rates are "still alarmingly and unacceptably high in rural areas and among migrant populations," Hans Anders Troedsson, the World Health Organization's representative in China, was quoted as saying by the China Daily. He spoke at the launch of an annual report by the United Nation's Children's Fund (UNICEF) on the state of the world's children. The newspaper quoted a UNICEF China official as saying child mortality in remote and rural parts of the country remained two to five times higher than in urban areas. The UNICEF report said the death rate of children under five years was 24 per 1,000 live births in 2006, down from 45 per 1,000 in 1990. But the report also said about 415,000 children died in China each year, 4.3 percent of the world total. Despite a long-running economic expansion, about 10 percent of China's 1.3 billion people still live in poverty, according to estimates. An estimated 150 million people have become migrant workers, seeking jobs far from their homes and often taking their families with them. Their migrant status means they frequently encounter problems obtaining adequate health care.
NEW DELHI One in five children who die within four weeks of birth is an Indian despite improvements in child-mortality rates worldwide, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said. Globally, the number of children who die before their fifth birthday has dropped to a historic low of 9.7 million annually. South Asia accounts for 3.1 million and India for 2.1 million of these deaths, UNICEF said in its annual State of the World's Children report. Nearly 50 percent of Indian children who die before the age of five do not survive beyond the first 28 days, the agency said. "India has the single highest share of neonatal deaths in the world," said UNICEF's India representative Gianni Murzi. Worldwide, neonatal deaths-or those of children under four weeks-make up 37 percent of under-five deaths, the agency said, emphasizing the need to check newborn deaths. "There is a huge number of neonatal deaths. Breast-feeding alone can reduce India's mortality rate by a few points," Murzi said. India will have to drastically improve the rate at which it is reducing under-five mortality from the current annual rate of 2.6 percent to 7.6 percent over the next nine years to achieve key UN goals by 2015, UNICEF said. "A substantial strengthening of the [Indian] health system is needed," Murzi said. While around 25 percent children globally were underweight, in India the number was 43 percent. The Indian government said the numbers-though not surprising-were a "big shock." "We are extremely worried about malnutrition," said Loveleen Kacker, a senior official from the women and child-development ministry, adding the government will scale up funding to boost nutrition. M |
