PHA-Exchange> The Lancet hits U.N. agencies on child mortality data

[Claudio Schuftan]

From: Vern Weitzel vern at coombs.anu.edu.au

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N20208875.htm


By Will Dunham
WASHINGTON, Sept 20 (Reuters) - A top medical journal on Thursday accused
U.N.
agencies of playing "fast and loose" with scientific data, and faulted
UNICEF
for what it called the hasty release of global child mortality figures.

The Lancet medical journal criticized the way the United Nations Children's
Fund
announced last week that worldwide deaths of children under 5 had fallen
below
10 million in 2006, which UNICEF hailed as a public health milestone.

The Lancet also faulted the way the World Health Organization used research
data
on a key method of preventing malaria -- using bed nets treated with
insecticides to ward off the mosquitoes that spread the disease.

The Lancet editorial said WHO ignored certain limitations in the study in
making
a public statement about the use of the bed nets.

"Both of these examples show how U.N. agencies are willing to play fast and
loose with scientific findings in order to further their own institutional
interests," the Lancet said in an editorial.

"The danger is that by appearing to manipulate science, breach trust, resist
competition, and reject accountability, WHO and UNICEF are acting contrary
to
responsible scientific norms that one would have expected U.N. technical
agencies to uphold. Worse, they risk inadvertently corroding their own
long-term
credibility," according to the Lancet editorial.

The Lancet said the agency annually publishes child mortality data in
December
and suggested UNICEF rushed this year's release to make it public before the
journal published a more critical assessment on Thursday, in the same issue
as
the editorial.

In the assessment published in Lancet, Christopher Murray, a professor of
global
health at the University of Washington and a former WHO official, estimated
that
between 9.5 and 10 million children under 5 died in 2005.

His team concluded there had been too little progress in reducing child
deaths,
writing, "Globally, we are not doing a better job of reducing child
mortality
now than we were three decades ago."

A UNICEF spokeswoman said the agency had done nothing wrong in releasing the
child mortality figures as it did.

"UNICEF first announced that the under-5 mortality figures were likely to
fall
below 10 million at two major conferences in June," the agency said in a
statement.

"As soon as we had confidence in a more precise figure (9.7 million), we
also
made this available. UNICEF hopes that the progress revealed by the new
figure
will act as a spur for greater urgency to achieve the child survival goals,"
the
statement added.

UNICEF said last week global efforts to promote childhood immunization,
breast-feeding and anti-malaria measures had helped cut the death rate of
children under age 5 by nearly a quarter since 1990 and more than 60 percent
since 1960.
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