Child mortality at record low

For the first time since the United Nations began to keep records in 1960, the number of child deaths fell below the 10-million mark. Annual deaths of children under the age of five dropped from about 13 million in 1990 to 9.7 million in 2006--a 25-percent reduction. The highest rates of child mortality are still in West and Central Africa but, even there, rates have plummeted in the past four years. Globally for children under five in 1960 there were 184 deaths per 1,000 live births; in 2006 there were 72 deaths per 1,000 live births. (There are fewer than six deaths for children under five per 1,000 live births in Canada.)

Even in Malawi, one of the poorest countries in the world, deaths of children under five dropped 29 percent between 2000 and 2004. The biggest reason is that all pregnant women are now given a free insecticide-treated mosquito net for themselves and their children to sleep under. The bed nets have cut malaria deaths by about a third in the past few years. Malawi has 3,500 paid community health workers, most of whom work in rural villages. They weigh and vaccinate babies, diagnose respiratory infections and malnutrition and refer babies to clinics. They also encourage exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of a child’s life. Child survival improves with primary education which was made free in Malawi in 1994. For the full story see Stephanie Nolan’s “Simple as that” in the Globe and Mail, Oct 6, 2007. 

Australia: women bishops

A church court ruling now permits Anglican women bishops in Australia. Australia’s General Synod had failed to pass legislation favouring women bishops so the issue had been put to the church’s highest court.

In a split 4-3 decision released on Sept 28, the Church’s Appellate Tribunal found the language of the Law of the Church of England Clarification Canon 1992 did not require a bishop to be male in order to meet the definition of ‘canonical fitness’ for the Episcopal ministry.

The court said the move could only occur in a diocese that had both adopted a 1992 church law allowing women priests and which had ensured its own laws and constitution allowed it.

Australia's Primate, Archbishop Phillip Aspinall said, "This means that whenever there are vacancies in dioceses that have adopted the 1992 canon and whose own diocesan law permits it, a woman can become a diocesan bishop."

Sydney Archbishop Peter Jensen, a leading conservative whose Sydney diocese has not adopted the 1992 reforms, expressed disappointment with the decision.

The Archbishop of Melbourne, Dr. Philip Freier, welcomed the decision saying

the diocese “has historically strongly supported women becoming bishops.”

New African Leaders

The one liberal hold-out in Africa will get a new Primate who is orthodox. The Rt. Rev. Thabo Cecil Makgoba, Bishop of Grahamstown, was elected Archbishop of Cape Town and Metropolitan and Primate of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa on Sept. 25. Bishop Makgoba, 47, will succeed the Most Rev. Njongonkulu Ndungane as archbishop, and will assume office on Jan 1. He is viewed as a conservative on sexual issues and is expected to try to move the South African church closer to the other African Anglican provinces. The spiritual reconstruction of the church and of South African society will guide his tenure as archbishop, he told the South African Broadcasting Corporation.

Meanwhile in Mauritius, on Oct. 5, the Council of Anglican Provinces in Africa (CAPA) elected Archbishop Ian Ernest of the Indian Ocean as Chairman. He succeeds Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria. - The Living Church and VOL