India State-Level Disease Burden Initiative: Mortality Rate dropped by 49%

The India State-Level Disease Burden Initiative has recently published two scientific papers. The initiative has given its report on district-level trends of child growth and child mortality.

Key Findings

• The child mortality rate has dropped by 49% between 2000 and 2017.
• According to the report, though child mortality and child growth has improved, the inequality between the districts is high
• The inequality among states between the period has grown by 6 times and among the districts in a state has grown by 11 times.
• The report says that there were around 1.04 million under-5 deaths in 2017. This has decreased from 2.24 million in 2000. Also, neonatal deaths decreased from 1.02 million to 0.57 million in 2017. Though Neonatal Mortality Rate dropped by 38% since 2000, the variation has increased 5 times. 83% of the neonatal deaths in the country is due to short gestation and low birth weight.
• According to the report, 46% of the child in India are with short gestation, 21% are with child growth failure.

Causes of Under-5 deaths

The main causes of under-5 deaths according to the report are diarrheal diseases, preterm birth, lower respiratory infections and birth asphyxia. Of all, lower birth weight was the major cause

India State-Level Disease Burden Initiative

The initiative was launched under the collaboration of ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research) and Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI). The initiative has experts and stakeholders that are associated with 100s of Institutions.

Month: Current Affairs - May, 2020