United Nations agencies, UNICEF, WHO as well as the Washington-based World Bank have said Mozambique is part of a group of ten countries in sub-Saharan Africa that have achieved half of the targets of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for reducing child mortality.In a joint report sent to APA on Sunday, UNICEF, WHO and the World Bank said the ten countries of sub-Saharan Africa’s poor who managed to reach half of the MDGs are Eritrea, Ethiopia, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Niger, Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania. “The death of children under five declined from 12.7 million a year in 1990 to 5.9 million in 2015,” the report said. According to the report, this is the first year in which the number stood below the mark of six million while infant mortality has dropped by more than half compared to the 1990s. The report, entitled Levels and Trends in Child Mortality 2015 still advanced that the reduction of 53 percent in mortality in children under five years is not enough to achieve the MDG of a two-thirds reduction between 1990 and 2015, for 16 000 children under five years are still dying every day. “The main challenge continues to be registered at birth or around this time, as prematurity, malnutrition, pneumonia, complications during labor, diarrhea and malaria remain the main causes of infant death” the report added. The child mortality reduction rate can speed up considerably but, for this purpose, it is urgent work in the regions with the highest levels, in this case, sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. “Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest rate of mortality in children under five in the world, with one in 12 children dying before their fifth birthday, 12 times as high than the average of 1 in 147 children in countries of high income” the report added. Sub-Saharan Africa as a whole, continues to be faced with the enormous challenge of a growing population of children under five years, projected to increase by nearly 30 percent over the next 15 years, coupled with the persistent poverty in many countries. Within the global scale, according to the report, about one-third of the world’s countries, 62 have reached the MDG target of reducing mortality in children under-five by two thirds, while another 74 countries have reduced rates at least by half. This time, the world as a whole, has been to accelerate progress in reducing mortality in children under-five years and its rising annual reduction rate of 1.8 percent in 1990-2000 to 3.9 percent in 2000-2015.