Infant mortality rate (Indicator 4.2) reflects the probability of death between birth and one year-old, and it is expressed by each 1,000 children born alive. This indicator represents mortality rate in children as a whole and tehre is more historical information available from a large number of countries for comparison purposes (United Nations, 2008/ 1).

The Latin America and Caribbean region shows remarkable progress in terms of infant mortality rate for the period of 1990 – 2006. This period amounts to two-thirds of the time set to reach the Millennium Development Goals. However, should the present pace of reduction continues, the Goal will not be reached by 2015. Mortality rate was reduced for this age group in a rather significant manner, thus increasing life expectancy upon birth. In 2007 the infant mortality rate for this region was the lowest in the developing world and such decrease was lower when compared with the rest of the regions. Hence, their relatively outstanding position in the world context (United Nations, 2008/1 ).

Achievements in this area are due to the combination of multiple processes such as progress made in high impact, low cost primary care-massive inoculation programs, oral re-hydration therapy, breast feeding and health checks conducted on healthy children- along with sustained socio-economic and demographic changes, increase in coverage of basic services, especially safe drinking water and sanitation, increase of the education level of the population, and decrease in fertility (Jiménez et al., 2007/2). Nevertheless, the regional average for infant mortality indicates major differences from country to country. While in a group of three countries these levels were under 10%, the indices of the remaining 11 were greater than the regional average amounting to 22 by 1,000 (United Nations, 2008/1).

In the "Measles Initiative ” a goal of 90% coverage against measles by 2010 was proposed. The Latin American and the Caribbean region not only has reached that goal with a 93% vaccination coverage against measles in 2006/a, but the coverage at the region is even better than in any other region, even exceeding developed countries (www.unicef.org).

Two-thirds of the countries in the region have already achieved 90% coverage against measles. Efforts made by Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia are remarkable as they have reached a high increment in the percentage of children under-one year inoculated against measles and have also made progress -since 1990, with annual average rates of 2.3, 2.2 , and 1.8 percentage points respectively.

Nevertheless, there still are 10 countries where significant improvement will be needed in the level of coverage of vaccination against measles as to reach the Goal by 2010. These are Venezuela, Bolivia, Haiti, Surinam, Jamaica, Paraguay, Colombia, Bahamas, Trinidad and Tobago and Costa Rica.