Society · Under-five mortality · Lesotho
Lesotho’s under-five mortality fell to 60 per 1,000 live births in 2024.
60 per 1,000 live births
2024
Down 1.3 per 1,000 live births from 2023.
Updated 18 Oct 2026
In plain words
60 per 1,000 live births
What it is. Under-five mortality is the chance that a child born alive dies before their fifth birthday, expressed per 1,000 live births. It is estimated from birth histories in household surveys and from civil registration where that works well, then modelled into a yearly series. It covers deaths from newborn age to age four, and it says nothing about the health of children who survive.
Lower is better. Fewer child deaths is better, so a falling figure means more children are reaching their fifth birthday. Lesotho's latest figure is 60 per 1,000 live births for 2024, down from 61.3 per 1,000 live births a year earlier. That is a fall of 1.3 per 1,000 live births, or 2.1% in a year. The figure is the lowest in the series since 2015, when it stood at 75.1 per 1,000 live births, the highest in that span.
Why it matters. A rate of 60 per 1,000 live births means that about one child in every seventeen born in Lesotho does not reach the age of five. For households, that risk is concentrated where clinics are far away and illness is treated late. For the state, it sets the workload for maternal and child health services and shows how much ground is left to cover, since the rate has dropped steadily since 2015.
| Period | Under-five mortality · Lesotho |
|---|---|
| 2015 | 75.1 per 1,000 live births |
| 2016 | 71.4 per 1,000 live births |
| 2017 | 70.1 per 1,000 live births |
| 2018 | 68.8 per 1,000 live births |
| 2019 | 68.1 per 1,000 live births |
| 2020 | 66.3 per 1,000 live births |
| 2021 | 64 per 1,000 live births |
| 2022 | 62 per 1,000 live births |
| 2023 | 61.3 per 1,000 live births |
| 2024 | 60 per 1,000 live births |
Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators (CC BY 4.0) · Licence: CC BY 4.0
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Strata-AF™ Data, Under-five mortality, Lesotho, 2024; source World Bank, World Development Indicators (CC BY 4.0), retrieved 18 Oct 2026; https://data.strata-af.com/society/under-five-mortality/lesotho
Data insights · Worked out from the published figures
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Methodology
Probability of dying before the age of five, per 1,000 live births. Unit: per 1,000 live births.
Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators (series SH.DYN.MORT), retrieved through the World Bank API and published under CC BY 4.0. Updated annually; the World Bank's own source notes apply.