Rabat – The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) has estimated that Morocco registered 1,879 births on January 1, 2018. UNICEF estimated that Morocco’s New Year’s babies could live to the age of 77, until 2096. In Algeria, 2,407 babies were born on New Year’s Day, 516 were born in Tunisia, 335 in Libya, and 522 in Mauritania. Globally, India and China recorded the largest numbers of births on New Year’s Day, with 69,994 and 44,940 babies in each country, respectively. Large numbers of births were also recorded in Africa. Ethiopia registered 8,185 births, South Africa 3,320, Kenya 4,560, Uganda 5,500, and Tanzania 5,500 births. The mortality rate of children under the age of 5 has decreased throughout the years from 1990 to 2017 in Morocco and other Maghreb countries. According to estimates released in September from the UN Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation, the number of deaths among children aged 5 and below was 23 per 1,000 live births in 2017. Morocco registered 63 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1990. As for infants under 28 days, 14 deaths per 1,000 live births were registered in Morocco in 2017. According to the Child Mortality Estimation report, “boys are expected to have a higher probability of dying before reaching age 5 than girls” worldwide.