About 802,000 infant deaths reported in India in 2017: UN
About 802,000 infant deaths were reported in India in 2017, the lowest in five years, according to the United Nations Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (UNIGME). A new UNIGME report said that 605,000 neonatal deaths were reported in India in 2017, while the number of deaths among children aged 5 to 14 was 152,000. Here are more details.
Factors responsible for the decline in child deaths
"India continues to show an impressive decline in child deaths, with its share of global under-five deaths for the first time equalling its share of childbirths," Yasmin Ali Haque, Representative, UNICEF India said. "The efforts for improving institutional delivery, along with countrywide scale-up of special newborn care units and strengthening of routine immunization, have been instrumental towards this," she said.
Infant deaths have come down to 802,000 in 2017: Report
The infant deaths have come down from 867,000 in 2016 to 802,000 in 2017. In 2016, India's infant mortality rate was 44 per 1,000 live births. In 2017, sex-specific under-five mortality rate was 39 in 1,000 for male and 40 in 1,000 for females. "Even more heartening is the fourfold decline in the gender gap in the survival of the girl child," Haque said.
A child under 15 died every 5 seconds in 2017
An estimated 6.3mn children aged below 15 died in 2017, or 1 every 5 seconds, mostly of preventable causes, according to new mortality estimates released by UNICEF, the WHO, the United Nations Population Division and the World Bank Group. A vast majority of these deaths 5.4mn occurred in the first five years of life, with newborns accounting for around half of the deaths.
56mn children under five will die till 2030: UNICEF
"Without urgent action, 56mn children under five will die from now until 2030 half of them newborns," said Laurence Chandy, UNICEF Director of Data, Research, and Policy. Globally, in 2017, half of all deaths under five years of age took place in sub-Saharan Africa and another 30% in Southern Asia. In sub-Saharan Africa, 1 in 13 children died before their fifth birthday.
Most children under 5 die due to treatable causes: Report
Most children under five die due to treatable causes like complications during birth, pneumonia, diarrhea, neonatal sepsis, and malaria, the report said. By comparison, among children between 5 and 14 years of age, injuries become a more prominent cause of death. Reportedly, regional differences also exist, with the risk of dying for a child from sub-Saharan Africa 15 times higher than in Europe.
