Zimbabwe’s infant mortality rate has risen by 20 percent over the past two decades as children younger than five succumb to the HIV/AIDS pandemic and pneumonia, a joint government and United Nations survey showed on Tuesday.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Tuesday a survey it carried with Zimbabwe’s government in May this year showed the number of children dying under the age of five had risen by 20 percent since 1990, the baseline year for the UN’s Millennium Development Goals.

However, UNICEF had said in a March 2005 report that the under-5 mortality rate rose 50 percent between 1990-2005 to 1 death in every 8 births, suggesting that the mortality rate is now increasing at a slower pace than before.

The latest report showed that between 2005-2009, 94 children out of every 1,000 newly born children died before reaching the age of five, up from 82 deaths in 2005.

“Major causes of death of children under five are HIV/AIDS, newborn disorders, pneumonia and diarrhoea,” it said.

Half of women in Zimbabwe’s poor rural areas were also giving birth at home, with high hospital fees proving a barrier to women accessing obstetric services.

Zimbabwe’s economic woes have destroyed the public health system, a factor highlighted by last year’s cholera outbreak which killed nearly 5,000 people.

On Tuesday the official Herald newspaper reported that six suspected cholera cases had been recorded in the past week in a poor township in the capital Harare, whose authorities are struggling to supply clean water to residents.

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* Deaths due to HIV/AIDS, pneumonia

* Half of rural women give birth at home

HARARE (Reuters)