Lancet report hails India’s work in bringing down child mortality rate by 1 million

India prevented the deaths of about one million children under five in 2005-15, driven by significant reductions in the mortality rates of pneumonia, diarrhoea, tetanus and measles, says a new study published in Lancet.

The study stressed that India would need to maintain the rapid decline in mortality of children in the 1-59-month group and accelerate declines in neonatal mortality to over 5 per cent annually to achieve UN global goals of reducing child mortality to at least 25 per 1,000 live births by 2030.

Between 2000 and 2015, 29 million children below five died of different causes in India, data by the United Nations show.
“However, since 2005, the progress in terms of reduction in mortality accelerated. Had the mortality rates of 2000-2005 remain unchanged, 30 million children would have died by 2015,” said Dr Prabhat Jha, one of the authors and head of the Centre for Global Health Research of St Michael’s Hospital in Toronto.

The study noted that an increase in spending on public health by the Indian government, launching programmes to encourage women to give birth in hospitals and for children to have a second dose of measles vaccine could all have contributed to the improvement.

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