Child survival gets a boost
But more must be done to bring down India’s infant mortality
India’s under-five mortality rate (U-5MR) dropped four points in a single year in 2016, to 39 deaths per 1,000 live births from 43 in 2015. Apart from being the sharpest fall in a year, the decline also brought down India’s U-5MR below the global average of 39.1, according to data released by the United Nations on Tuesday. With 26 million births each year, India has the world’s largest birth cohort, and the four-point reduction in Infant Mortality Rate has led to 120,000 lives saved in one year. Another first for India is that its proportion of child deaths equals its share of the global births, with India accounting for 18% of the total births and 18% of U-5MR deaths worldwide.
Just three years ago, more than one million children died before reaching their fifth birthday from preventable and treatable causes. Neonatal deaths, or newborn deaths within 28 days of birth, because of pregnancy-related complications, accounted for 53% of all under-five deaths in 2016. Many of these newborns and children could have been saved by increasing institutional deliveries, postnatal follow-ups, improving mother and child nutrition, and providing water, sanitation and immunisations. The sharp decadal increase in institutional deliveries in public and private hospitals, up from 38.7% in 2006 to 78.9% in 2016, has lowered birth-related complications and helped India eliminate maternal and neonatal tetanus. But more needs to be done. It is imperative to widen the immunisation net. Boosting breastfeeding is another low-resource method to heighten childhood immunity and lower risk of infections.
Further increasing institutional delivery, strengthening routine immunisation under Mission Indradhanush, scaling up of special newborn care units to treat malnourished and ill newborns, providing holistic nutrition under Poshan Abhiyan (national nutrition mission), and meeting the national commitment to make the country open-defecation free by 2019, will collectively help reach its Sustainable Development Target to bring down U-5MR below 25 by 2030.