The Family, Health Promotion and Life Course Department is responsible for providing country-focused technical cooperation addressing several broad thematic areas that are included in its three units and one center: Comprehensive Family Immunization; Healthy Life Course; Women, Reproductive, Perinatal and Neonatal Health; and Health Promotion and Social Determinants.
Thanks to vaccination and surveillance efforts, the Region of the Americas was the first in the world to eliminate smallpox, polio, rubella, congenital rubella syndrome, measles, and neonatal tetanus.
The risk of dying in the first year of life was reduced by 55% between 1995 and 2017 in the Region, from 23.6 deaths in 1995 to 13.1 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2017.
Between 1995-2019, life expectancy increased from 723 to 77 years in the Region of the Americas. In a few decades, there will be more older persons than children in the world for the first time in human history.
The adolescent fertility rate decreased 37% in the Americas between 1995-2019.