New Delhi: India’s infant mortality rate or IMR has dropped more than 37% in a decade, from 40 deaths per 1,000 births in 2013 to 25 in 2023, new data from the 2023 Sample Registration Survey released by the government Thursday showed.
IMR, the number of fatalities per 1,000 children under the age of one, is considered a key public health indicator and a low IMR is suggestive of better neonatal and maternal care, healthcare and socio-economic conditions.
India’s IMR fell below the global average around 2021, and has been showing a faster decline than the world rate. But it is still higher than the average for Asia where the IMR is less than 18.
The IMR for India has gone up by one point from the previous year, but over the last five years, the average improvement has been 1.4 points.
Several states have made much sharper reductions in their IMR rate.
National capital Delhi, Karnataka and Himachal Pradesh for instance have managed to bring down the IMR by more than half over the last decade, registering the biggest gains on a vital indicator of child health on which consistent progress has been made across the country.
Andhra Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir showed even steeper declines, but these are not directly comparable because J&K included Ladakh and Andhra was united with Telangana in 2013.
Kerala remains the only big state with a single digit IMR. It saw the death of just five infants below the age of one per 1,000 births, a rate comparable to most developed countries. But the state happens to have the largest difference in the IMRs of boys and girls: nine compared to two.
Smaller states such as Manipur, Sikkim and Goa also have single-digit IMRs, as do nearly all Union Territories.
Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, with IMRs of 37 each, on the other hand, have the highest rate in the country, followed by Odisha and Assam (30 each).
Experts attributed the improvement in IMR to significant improvement in services such as neonatal care and immunisation.
“Most deaths in infants happen within the first 28 days of life and it’s noteworthy that India has managed to bring down the mortalities during that crucial period,” Dr HPS Sachdev, a paediatrician researcher with Sitaram Bhartia Institute of Science & Research in Delhi, told ThePrint.
One of the key reasons behind the development, he said, has been opening of neonatal intensive care units or NICUs in government facilities across the country that have also functioned well.
But, said the expert, the momentum may be difficult to maintain and it may be harder to bring the rate down further because the comparatively easier efforts have already been made over the last several decades.
“What the country needs to do now is to identify region-specific barriers in order to remove regional disparities and also identify the measures required to lower the national IMR further,” he added.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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