Uttar Pradesh's infant mortality rate down 37% since 2010

Lucknow:

More children are living in UP now as compared to the numbers a decade ago, suggests a comparison of the Sample Registration System (SRS) bulletin on Infant Mortality Rate. The bulletin for reference year 2020 was released last week. At least 55 lakh children are born in UP each year.
Compared to an infant mortality rate of 61 in 2010, UP’s IMR was reported to be 38 in 2020. This also means that the decline in state’s infant mortality has been over 37% in the past decade. Experts called it a reason to smile as it means that life of at least 1.31 additional infants has been saved in the decade. The children would have died otherwise.

To note, infant mortality is the death of an infant before his or her first birthday while IMR is the number of infant deaths for every 1,000 live births. In addition to giving us key information about maternal and infant health, the infant mortality rate is an important marker of the overall health of a society.

The decline is multi-factorial outcome, believe experts. Informing that three-fourth of all the infant deaths happen in the new-born period (first four weeks of life), specialist, health, Unicef UP, Dr Kanupriya Singhal said: “many of these babies are now being saved as the rate of institutional delivery (of child birth at a health facility) and availability of sick new born care units in state has improved drastically in Uttar Pradesh.”

Dr Singhal also said that IMR has declined in UP even during the pandemic period by three points – from 41 to 38. “This may appear small but is surely not and speaks for state’s effort made to sustain essential services for women and children during the pandemic period,” she said.

National Family Health Survey data shows that rate of intuitional deliveries in UP has improved from 67% (NFHS-4) to 83% (NFHS-5) now. Likewise, data from UP National Health Mission indicates that number of sick new born care units has increased from just one in 2010 to 89 (across 71 districts) now. “More than one lakh sick neonates are attended by the SNCUs in UP now which ends up saving a good majority of babies,” explained Dr Singhal.

Experts also said that improvement in routine immunisation and diarrhoea prevalence has also contributed. Between NFHS-4 and 5, UP’s total routine immunisation coverage has increased from 51% to 70%. Under the Intensified Mission Indradhanush programme, the total RI coverage has crossed 85% mark.

Noting that diarrhoea has been a key reason of under-five mortality in UP, officials pointed out that the diarrhoea infection rate in UP has come down from 15% (NFHS-4) to 5.6% (NFHS-5) now. An estimated 28,000 child deaths in the state were attributed to the common medical condition which can be checked with simple ORS and zinc therapy.

The list of reasons also includes introduction of home based new born care programmes in which the ASHAs track the health of sick or low birth weight babies besides factors like incentives for child birth at hospitals, dedicated ambulance network for pregnant women, dedicated programmes to promote ante-natal check-ups, rise in education level of the people in general and decline in child marriages.

An official statement issued by the government said that many steps have been taken under CM Yogi Adityanath’s leadership over the past five years. It also said that UP’s performance has been ranked best by the NITI Aayog on different counts. “In terms of improving health facilities, Uttar Pradesh ranks first in the Delta rankings,” it said.