About 1,886 babies are due to be born in Thailand today, accounting for 0.49% of the estimated 385,793 newborns globally on New Year's Day, Unicef said yesterday.
Christmas Island, a Pacific Ocean coral atoll in Kiribati, is likely to welcome the first baby of 2018.
More than half of today's births are expected to take place in the following nine countries:
India -- 69,070
China -- 44,760
Nigeria -- 20,210
Pakistan -- 14,910
Indonesia -- 13,370
USA -- 11,280
Democratic Republic of Congo -- 9,400
Ethiopia -- 9,020
Bangladesh -- 8,370
Tragically, many of these will not survive their first 24 hours.
In 2016, an estimated 2,600 infants died within the first 24 hours of their lives every day of the year. For almost 2 million newborns, their first week was also their last. During that year, 2.6 million infants died before the end of their first month.
Doctors say more than 80% of these deaths are preventable, with common causes including premature deliveries, complications during delivery, and infections like sepsis and pneumonia.
On the bright side, the world has seen unprecedented progress in terms of survival rates for young children over the past two decades, with the number of toddlers who die before their fifth birthday being reduced by half to 5.6 million in 2016. But despite these advances, there has been slower progress for newborns. Babies who die within the first month account for 46% of all deaths among children under five.
Next month, Unicef will launch Every Child Alive, a global campaign to demand and deliver affordable, quality health care solutions for every mother and newborn across the world. These include a steady supply of clean water and electricity at health facilities, the presence of a skilled health attendant during delivery, disinfecting the umbilical cord, breastfeeding within the first hour after birth, and skin-to-skin contact between mother and child.
"We are now entering the era when all the world's newborns should have the opportunity to see the 22nd century," said Alistair Gretarsson at Unicef Thailand. "Unfortunately, nearly half of the children born this year likely won't. A child born in Sweden in January 2018 is most likely to live to 2100, while a child from Somalia would be unlikely to live beyond 2075."
