• Of the estimated 9.7 million children in the world dying before completing five years of age, 2.1 million, or 21%, are in India
• 50% of child morality is due to neo-natal reasons, as opposed to 37% across the world.

The other causes are

• pneumonia (19%),
• diarrhoea (17%),
• malaria (8%),
• measles and injuries (4% and 3% respectively),
• AIDS (3%) and
• other causes (10%).

Other findings of the report are:

• 9.4 million children in India are not immunised.
• 8.3 million children weigh less than 2,500 gm at birth.
• One-third of all underweight children in the world are in India.

States with high rates of underweight children are

1. Madhya Pradesh,
2. Jharkhand,
3. Bihar,
4. Gujarat,
5. Orissa,
6. Chhattisgarh,
7. Uttar Pradesh and
8. Meghalaya.

• Children in rural India live in unsanitary surroundings, with 700 million people without access to improved sanitation facilities.
• The maternal mortality rate is 450 per 100,000 live births, according to the report, although domestic sources put it at 301.