Pakistan has the highest rate of first day deaths and stillbirths in the world at 40.7 per 1,000 births, followed by Nigeria (32.7), Sierra Leone (30.8), Somalia (29.7), Guinea-Bissau (29.4) and Afghanistan (29.0), a report out on Tuesday said.
The charity Save the Children said in the report that a million newborn babies a year die within 24 hours, urging governments to tackle preventable deaths.
In Pakistan, fewer than half of women had a skilled health worker present at birth.
Attempts to improve this have been dogged by “delays in the salary disbursements, ‘stock-outs’ of medicines, unavailable and dysfunctional equipment, and an unhelpful referral system”, the report said.
Earlier India had the highest number of first day deaths and stillbirths at 598,038 per year, a quarter of the 2.2 million lives lost.
The under-five mortality rate in India has been more than halved since 1990, from 126 per 1,000 live births to 56.1.
“(Indian) states with strong health systems and implementation mechanisms have done exceedingly well compared with others,” the report said.
The report by the British-based organisation said 6.6 million children around the world died in 2012 before their fifth birthday, mostly from preventable causes.
The number has almost halved from the 12.6 million in 1990, but there remains a “deplorable problem of lack of attention to babies in their first days of life”, the aid organisation said.
In its report, entitled “Ending Newborn Deaths”, it said one million babies did not survive their first 24 hours of life in 2012.
It said two million babies could be saved each year if preventable newborn mortality was ended.
