Burundi is one of the most backward nations on earth, populated mostly by subsistence farmers who get barely enough to eat and don’t produce any agricultural surplus to buy goods and services. Over 80% of all workers in Burundi are farmers, the highest percentage of any nation on Earth. Burundi has almost no industry or service sector, because its farmers are so poor they can’t afford any services or much in the way of industrial products. Nor can they produce more food than they themselves consume.
And yet, child mortality has fallen by nearly two-thirds in Burundi, thanks to vaccination. Even though four in ten people in Burundi are chronically hungry.
“Child mortality in Burundi fell from 143 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2002 to 50 in 2022. Part of this progress was due to an 81 percent drop in deaths from vaccine-preventable diseases since 2014,” reports The Doomslayer.
“Child mortality attributed to vaccine-preventable disease in Burundi stood at 1,430 deaths in the year 2014, versus in the year 2024, in which the country recorded just 265 fatalities linked to vaccine-preventable diseases (VPDs),” a news article says.
“Burundi’s immunization coverage – using coverage with the third dose of the basic diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus-containing vaccine (DTP3) as a proxy for coverage in general – rose from 81% to 91% in that same time-frame.”
“This improvement is accompanied by an impressive decline in child mortality from vaccine-preventable diseases, including pneumonia (-92%), tuberculosis (-72%), and acute respiratory infections (-69%),” said Dr Polycarpe Ndayikeza,
This doesn’t mean no people are dying in Burundi. Ethnic mass slaughter has occurred there repeatedly in the past and may well occur again. In 1972, Burundi’s Tutsi minority government slaughtered over 100,000 members of the Hutu majority.
