CHILD HEALTH Canada slipping on Children's Index PAT HEWITT Canadian Press - May 9, 2007 TORONTO -- A new report from an international charity shows Canada is plunging on a scale assessing the outlook for children in countries around the world. The report from Save the Children, based in London, has Canada dropping over the past year to 25th place from fifth on the Children's Index. The humanitarian group's index ranks 140 countries on measures such as children's mortality under the age of five, enrolment in day care, nursery school and secondary school. The United Kingdom is ranked 21st, the United States at No. 30. "I think we are slipping," said David Morely, president and chief executive officer of Save the Children in Canada. "We have been cutting back on our social programs and we start to see that happening." Mr. Morely said that while Canada's economic indicators have been getting stronger, social indicators have not. "I think if we're going to have a discussion in the country, perhaps it should be about what are the indicators that are going to drive us. "Is it going to be economic or going to be social? Or how do we get a mix of the two so that we can move forward as a society?" He said the main reason for Canada's drop can be attributed to the fact that it lags far behind the Europeans in early-childhood education. "We know that's really key for child development and societal development. We're just not up to the same rate as other countries who are as wealthy as we are," he said. Canada spends 0.25 per cent of its gross domestic product on early childhood programs while other developed countries spend up to 2 per cent. Iraq is ranked worst in the report, which used data from 1990-2005, because it has made the least progress toward improving child survival rates. One in eight Iraqi children died of disease or violence before reaching their fifth birthday. Save the Children found that improvements in child survival were being reversed in the world's poorest countries, including Botswana, Zimbabwe and Swaziland. Most of the world's 10 million child deaths each year -- 94 per cent -- occur in just 60 developing countries. In Canada, the report suggests six out of 1,000 children won't reach their fifth birthday. That's up from five out of 1,000 in a report issued at the same time last year. "It has gone up a bit, but it still is comparable to other countries. "We are certainly seeing an increase and it's certainly a very disturbing increase to see that happening here in Canada," Mr. Morely said. While he didn't provide figures, Mr. Morely said there are higher mortality rates among first-nations children. In developing countries, the three biggest killers of children under 5 are newborn disorders, pneumonia and diarrhea. But in Canada and in other industrialized countries, the report says children are more likely to die of accidents, intentional harm, drowning, falling, fire and poisoning. "Here in Canada, where we do have a strong public-health system, it tends to be accidents, except for some of the remote indigenous communities where health care is harder to get at." Factors contributing to children dying young in industrialized countries, the report found, include single parenthood, low levels of maternal education, teenage motherhood, substandard housing, large family size and parental drug or alcohol addiction. And death rates are higher for male children. "With Mother's Day coming up this weekend - and we're always talking about how we want to celebrate and honour our mothers - this report is trying to take a look at the situation of mothers and their young children all around the world and have all of us think as a society, well, what are we doing as a society to make sure that mothers and children are well cared for?," Mr. Morely said. "It's not only what governments can do. It's what all of us as a society want to do to be sure that mothers and children are well cared for. That's what this report is for."