Sekondi, Aug. 19, GNA - Mr. Sylvester Kyei-Gyamfi, Head of the Information Research and Advocacy Division (IRAD) of the Department of Children said child survival in Ghana remains a challenge. He said 80,000 children in Ghana die before they are five years old every year.

Mr. Kyei-Gyamfi said this at a dissemination workshop in Takoradi on Ghana's Plus 5 Report on the World Fit for Children (WFFC). The report is being disseminated in the Volta, Ashanti, Greater Accra and Western regions between August 11 and September 2 this year. Mr Kyei-Gyamfi said the Ghana Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) of 2006 estimated under-five mortality rates of 111 per every 1,000 live births and infant mortality rates of 71 per every 1,000 live births.

"This negative trend of child deaths has not recorded any significant changes in the National infant, child and under-five mortality rates since the early 1990s", he said. Malaria has been identified as the number one killer of children under five and pregnant women.

"Miscarriages and low birth weight among pregnant women have been attributed to malaria but the fatality rate among children under five had declined from 3.7 percent to 2.4 percent between 2002 to 2005" he said.

Mr. Kyei-Gyamfi said though current maternal mortality rates are not known, institutional maternal mortality ratio which measures maternal deaths in health facilities decreased from 197 per 100,000 live births in 2005 to 187 per 100,000 live births in 2006.

He said enrolment of children at the kindergarten has doubled from 550,000 in 2001 to 1,104.779 in 2007.

Mr. Kyei-Gyamfi said primary enrolment also increased from 2.5 million to 3.4 million within the same period, while Junior High School also increased from 896,000 to 1,132,318 within the same period. "In spite of these laudable achievements, there are still about 800,000 children of primary school going age who are not in school," he said.