Amid the depressing news of thousands of Ebola deaths, NPR has an uplifting story about how worldwide child mortality has dropped dramatically, and not just over the last century but over the last couple decades:

In 2013, 6.3 million children under the age of 5 died. That’s a tragic statistic — yet it represents a 49 percent drop from 1990, according to data released Tuesday by the United Nations…

In many ways, under-5 mortality is a lens of how far we have progressed as a civilization. Newborns, premature babies and children under 5 are the most vulnerable members of our society. They are completely reliant on the values, the care and the love that we as a society are providing to each other.

The reduction in mortality rates is a measure of children’s lives, which are very important. Each life saved is someone else who will contribute to our well-being as a whole. But it’s also a measure of how we are progressing as human beings. If there are still children dying of causes which can be easily prevented, cheaply, and we still aren’t doing that? Then we aren’t really progressing as much as we think we are.

They have an animated map of where the biggest gains have been – Asia and South America. There have been gains in Africa, but Africa still has the highest rates and some of the highest rates in Africa are in the same area where the Ebola epidemic is taking place.