- 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
- Madhya Pradesh,
- Jharkhand,
- Bihar,
- Gujarat,
- Orissa,
- Chhattisgarh,
- Uttar Pradesh and
- 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.