Fewer children dying from diseases: Study

LONDON - Child deaths worldwide seem to have fallen faster than officials thought, as a new study estimates far fewer children are dying every year than previously guessed by the United Nations.

Using more data and an improved modeling technique, scientists predicted about 7.7 million children under 5 would die this year, down from nearly 12 million in 1990. The study was published online Monday in the British medical journal, Lancet.

The new estimate is substantially lower than UNICEF's last estimate of child deaths from 2008. Then, the agency said about 8.7 million children were dying every year of preventable causes such as diarrhea, pneumonia and malaria.