Infant mortality rate: Target set by Millennium Development Goals not met

• Sample Registration System (SRS) Bulletin 2014, is published by the Registrar General of India.
• This report is released for only 23 states and Union territories of India.
• According to this report none of the ten big states have been able to reduce the Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) as per the target set in the Millennium Development Goals (MDG).

Highlights of the Report:

• MDG 4(Millineum development target - 4 ) is to reduce Infant Mortality by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015. This means IMR in India supposed to be decreased from 88 in 1990 to 29 in 2015.
• IMR of India as of 2013 was 40 per thousand live births and it’s unlikely that India will achieve the target. The national average for 2014 is awaited.
• Among the 23 states and UTs for which data has been released, six Union Territories – Delhi, Puducherry, Daman & Diu, Chandigarh, Dadra & Nagar Haveli – and four small North Eastern states –Nagaland, Sikkim, Manipur, Tripura – have IMR less than the national target of 29 per thousand live births.
• Madhya Pradesh continues to be the worst among the states followed by Odisha, Assam and Uttar Pradesh. In fact, none of the ten big states for which data has been released are even close to the national target.
• From 1990 to 2014, among states where IMR is greater than 40 – the national average as of 2013 – the slowest pace of reduction in IMR was found in Meghalaya (15 per cent), Assam (35 per cent), Bihar (44 per cent) and Rajasthan (45 per cent). As per MDG, the target was to reduce IMR by 66 per cent by 2015.
• Interventions to improve neonatal mortality are a focused set of services that need attention within the health system. A major underlying driver of poor outcomes for mothers and children is early pregnancy, something that has not received enough attention in programs and policies.

About Millennium Development Goal
At the Millennium Summit in September 2000 the largest gathering of world leaders in history adopted the UN Millennium Declaration, committing their nations to a new global partnership to reduce extreme poverty and setting out a series of time-bound targets, with a deadline of 2015, that have become known as the Millennium Development Goals.
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are the world's time-bound and quantified targets for addressing extreme poverty in its many dimensions-income poverty, hunger, disease, lack of adequate shelter, and exclusion-while promoting gender equality, education, and environmental sustainability. They are also basic human rights-the rights of each person on the planet to health, education, shelter, and security.
MDG Goals are:

• Goal 1: Eradicate Extreme Hunger and Poverty
• Goal 2: Achieve Universal Primary Education
• Goal 3: Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women
• Goal 4: Reduce Child Mortality
• Goal 5: Improve Maternal Health
• Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other diseases
• Goal 7: Ensure Environmental Sustainability
• Goal 8: Develop a Global Partnership for Development

The world has made significant progress in achieving many of the Goals. Between 1990 and 2002 average overall incomes increased by approximately 21 percent. The number of people in extreme poverty declined by an estimated 130 million. Child mortality rates fell from 103 deaths per 1,000 live births a year to 88. Life expectancy rose from 63 years to nearly 65 years. An additional 8 percent of the developing world's people received access to water. And an additional 15 percent acquired access to improved sanitation services.
But progress has been far from uniform across the world-or across the Goals. There are huge disparities across and within countries. Within countries, poverty is greatest for rural areas, though urban poverty is also extensive, growing, and underreported by traditional indicators.
Sub-Saharan Africa is the epicenter of crisis, with continuing food insecurity, a rise of extreme poverty, stunningly high child and maternal mortality, and large numbers of people living in slums, and a widespread shortfall for most of the MDGs. Asia is the region with the fastest progress, but even there hundreds of millions of people remain in extreme poverty, and even fast-growing countries fail to achieve some of the non-income Goals. Other regions have mixed records, notably Latin America, the transition economies, and the Middle East and North Africa, often with slow or no progress on some of the Goals and persistent inequalities undermining progress on others.
 

By: Vishal