Despite the government’s efforts to improve child health, India has registered the worst child mortality rate.
More than 16 lakh children aged under five died in 2011 in the country.
Almost 19,000 children aged under five still die each day across the world, amounting to roughly 1.2 million under-five deaths from mostly preventable causes every two months, according to a report of the UNICEF.
The ‘Child Mortality Estimates Report 2012’ released by the UNICEF in New York on Thursday said that even as overall child mortality in the world has gone down, under-five deaths are increasingly concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
According to the report, about half of global under-five deaths occurred in just five countries -- India, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Pakistan and China in 2011. India and Nigeria together accounted for more than one-third of the total number of under-five deaths worldwide.
As per the report, among our neighbours, China has registered 2.49 lakh deaths of under-five children and Bangladesh 1.34 lakh such deaths in 2011.
In 2011, there were 27,098,275 live births, 1,655,394 under-five deaths with 61 (per 1,000 births) under-five mortality rate in India.
The report said that four in 10 under-five deaths occur during the first month of life. Among children who survive past the first month, pneumonia, diarrhoea and malaria are the leading killers.
“Despite all we have learned about saving children’s lives, our efforts still do not reach millions,” the report said.
“The discourse and debate on reaching the unreached in child survival must be intensified in populous, often middle-income countries with pockets of high child mortality. In several of these countries, including India and Nigeria, rapid economic growth and strong inflows of trade and investment in recent years have failed to bring about a corresponding reduction of inequities in under-five mortality,” the report said.
Reacting on the high number of under-five deaths, WHO’s India representative Nata Menabde said, “Given the size of the population, absolute numbers will always be high in case of India. This should not overshadow the fact that the country has made significant progress in the field of health.”