Unicef report lays bare stark reality of India

 30-Jun-16, The New Indian Express

India has a long way to go before it can attain the millennium goal in terms of infant mortality rate. The latest State of the World’s Children report by Unicef suggests 1.2 million children under the age of five died of totally preventable diseases in 2015.

These deaths were caused by factors like unhygienic conditions in which they lived and lack of medicines as inexpensive as sugar and salt given in potable water in the right proportion. In other words, it is a measure of the lack of basic healthcare facilities in the countryside where most of the deaths occurred. In fact, it is to take care of such losses that parents go in for more children.

Image: India TV News

True, India has made tremendous progress on all indices of progress. For instance, India’s under-five mortality rate - deaths per 1,000 live births - has improved to 48 in 2015 from 126 in 1990. But a country like China which was comparable to India on almost all social and economic indices in 1947 has stolen a march on India. In 2015, only 11 Chinese children per 1,000 in the 0-5 age-group died of preventable diseases.

India’s record is only marginally better than that of Afghanistan and Pakistan. What’s more important, countries like Nepal and Bangladesh have better child mortality rates.

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