A deacon helps young parishioners wash their hands before entering the church following local authorities’ instructions to limit the spread of the Ebola outbreak ahead of a mass at Bunia Cathedral in Bunia, Democratic Republic of Congo on May 24, 2026.
Kim Heller
The children of Africa are perishing. A child born on the African continent is far less likely to reach age five than one born almost anywhere else in the world.
In 2025, the UN Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation reported that of the 4.9 million children who died before they could celebrate their fifth birthday, the overwhelming majority were in sub-Saharan Africa. This must rank among the most heartbreaking failures of post-independence Africa.
This catastrophic child death toll is not the mishap of history, but a fatal symptom of a continent caught up in war, displacement, economic dependency, and recurring crisis. The result is collapsing healthcare systems, broken supply chains, and chronic vaccine shortages. Vaccine delays alone have cost hundreds of thousands of young lives.
