10: Neonatal deaths

• More than 2.1 million children die every year in India before attaining the age of five, and half of them do not survive beyond 28 days
• The under-5 mortality rate is 76 per 1,000 births.
• With one child dying every three seconds, India registers the highest number of child deaths across the globe, which stands at 9.7 million worldwide with 4 million being neonatal deaths.

Other findings of the report include:

• Of the 19 million infants in the developing world who have low birth weight (less than 2,500 grams), 8.3 million are in India.
• About 55 million or one-third of the world’s underweight children under the age of five live in India.
• The worst affected states are Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and Meghalaya.
• 61 million stunted children, which is 51% of all Indian children under the age of five years, and 34% of all stunted children worldwide’. (Lancet Series on Maternal and Child Undernutrition)
SourceThe State of the World’s Children 2008