UN warns India over its high infant mortality rate

MEXICO: The United Nations has issued a dire warning to India over its abysmally high infant and maternal mortality rate.

UNICEF has projected that if current trends of un der-five mortality rate con tinue, by 2030 just five countries will account for more than half of all under-five deaths - India (17%), Nigeria (15%), Pakistan (8%) Democratic Republic of the Congo (7%) and Angola (5 %) According to UNICEF, infant mortality rates stay at the present day levels, 69 million children will die before the age of 5 during the next 15 years; about half of those children will die within their first month of life.

According to their lates estimates, released on the sidelines of the Global Maternal Health Conference in Mexico, 5.9 million children will die before the age of 5 globally in 2015. Based on current pop ulation projections, 6.6 million children will die worldwide in 2030 if rates remain at 2015 levels. Of these under-five deaths, nearly a third will be in South Asia.

The warning comes weeks after UNICEF revealed that one in every 21 children being born in India is dying before reaching their fifth birthday as the country recorded the highest number of under-five deaths in 2015 globally.

The under-five mortality rate (U5MR) in India is about seven times higher than in high-income countries where 1 in 147 is dying. A study published in the Lancet showed that 1 in 5 under-five deaths took place in India in 2015 (20% of the global deaths) ­ numbering to 1.2 million children.

There was also a silver lining to it ­ U5MR in India dropped from 126 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1990 to 48 in 2015 ­ a 62% reduction. This is higher than the average global reduction of 53%.

Infectious diseases such as pneumonia and diarrhoea are still main killers of children under age five in India. In 2015, pneumonia is estimated to account for about 15% of the 1.2 million under-five deaths in India. Diarrhoea accounts for about 9%.

UNICEF says that 70% of the global decline in underfive deaths since 2000 is attributable to tackling key infectious diseases. Between 2000 and 2015, the annual number of under-five deaths fell from almost 10 million to 5.9 million.