- India’s child mortality rate has declined substantially between 1990 and 2019 but the country,
- along with Nigeria, still accounted for almost a third of all under-five deaths last year,
- According to a new UN report which warned that COVID-19 pandemic threatens to undo decades of progress in eliminating preventable child deaths globally.
- The ‘Levels & Trends in Child Mortality’ Report 2020 said that the number of global under-five deaths dropped to its lowest point on record in 2019 — down to 5.2 million from 12.5 million in 1990.
- Over the past 30 years, health services to prevent or treat causes of child death such as
- Preterm, low birth weight, complications during birth, neonatal sepsis, pneumonia, diarrhoea and malaria, as well as vaccination, have played a large role in saving millions of lives.
- However, the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in major disruptions to health services that threaten to undo decades of hard-won progress toward eliminating preventable child deaths.
- According to the new mortality estimates released by UNICEF, the World Health Organization (WHO), the Population Division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs and the World Bank Group, the under-five mortality rate (deaths per 1,000 live births) in India declined to 34 in 2019 from 126 in 1990.
- The infant mortality rate (deaths per 1,000 live births) in India declined from 89 in 1990 to 28 last year.
- The country also witnessed a decrease in neonatal mortality rate between 1990 and 2019 from 57 to 22.
- The probability of dying among children aged 5—14 years declined from 21 in 1990 to 5 in 2019 and the probability of dying among youth aged 15—24 years dipped from 24 to 10 between the period under review.
- The sex-specific under-five mortality rate (deaths per 1,000 live births) in India in 1990 stood at 122 males and 131 females and this declined to 34 males and 35 females in 2019.
- However, the global burden of under-five deaths weighs most heavily on just two regions – sub-Saharan Africa and Central and Southern Asia.
- The report said that about 53 per cent of all under-five deaths in 2019 – 2.8 million – occurred in sub-Saharan Africa, and roughly 1.5 million children (28 per cent) died in 2019 before reaching age 5 in Central and Southern Asia.
- Nearly half (49 per cent) of all under-five deaths in 2019 occurred in just five countries:
- Nigeria, India, Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Ethiopia. Nigeria and
- India alone account for almost a third, the report said.
