The efforts of wealthy nations, international agencies and philanthropists like Bill and Melinda Gabes have committed billions of dollars to the effort of lowering child mortality rates.

Taken together, they have helped cut the number of children under 5 who died last year to 8.8 million — the lowest since records were first kept in 1960, Unicef said — from 12.5 million in 1990. via NYTimes

The child morality rate has declined by more than a quarter in the last two decades — to 65 per 1,000 live births last year from 90 in 1990.

In the midst of celebrating, leaders remind everyone that there’s a long way to go in reaching the goal set by leaders of 189 nations in 2000: to reduce the child mortality rate by two-thirds by 2015.

“If we say as a world we care about saving children, and tackle the problem systematically, piece by piece, we can make progress, and it’s really important for people to know that,” Mrs. Gates said in an interview.

Four countries experienced an increase in child mortality rates: South Africa, Chad, Congo and Kenya.

Read: Child Mortality Rate Declines Globally

Note from Anne: In this NYTimes article is the second reference I’ve read this week regarding African women taking birth control into their own hands. We meet Teresa Frazier, 40, getting her injection of Depo Provera, from a male member of Malawi’s 10,000 high school-educated village health workers, who bike through the country dispensing medicine and basic medical information.

The other article is Significant Increase in Kenyan Women Secretly on Birth Control