India Has World\'s Worst Child Mortality Rate

September 13, 2012, 9:22 am

By SRUTHI GOTTIPATI

The world welcomed a piece of good news today: The number of children dying under the age of 5 has steadily dropped over two decades, according to a report by United Nations Children's Fund.

In India, that news was tempered by the fact that the country accounts for a significant number of those deaths.

Across the world, the number of children dying under the age of 5 was estimated to be 6.9 million last year - a notable drop from almost 12 million in 1990. The decline is attributed to effective interventions to fight diseases like measles, malaria and polio, as well as HIV.

With 1.7 million under-5 deaths, India alone accounts for nearly a quarter of those dea ths worldwide, according to Unicef. Although the number of such deaths has fallen in India over the years, the pace of the decline has been much slower than in other countries.

“The decline has been insufficient,” said Pavitra Mohan, a health specialist with Unicef in India “Based on the current trend, it appears unlikely that India will achieve the Millennium Development Goals” set by the United Nations.

Mr. Mohan said India has had the highest number of under-5 deaths for years partly because of the sheer number of births in the country. He notes that roughly a quarter of those deaths are in the populous state of Uttar Pradesh.

Mr. Mohan said the killers in India include infections and low birth weight that plague babies in their first month, and diarrhea and pneumonia once they're older. The government and development agencies have responded by expanding community-based intervention, newborn care in households and treatment of diarrhea and pneumo nia, he said.

In Thursday's report, Unicef said that under-5 deaths are increasingly concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. In 2011, 82 percent of under-5 deaths occurred in these two regions, up from 68 percent two decades before, the agency noted.

“The global decline in under-5 mortality is a significant success,” Unicef's executive director, Anthony Lake, said in the report. “But there is also unfinished business: Millions of children under 5 are still dying each year from largely preventable causes for which there are proven, affordable interventions.”