Death rate of babies in Delhi doubles in 2 years

According to the Delhi Economic Survey for 2008-2009, the deaths of children in their first year of birth has shot almost doubled in the last two years. The statistics reveal the child death per thousand was 12.89 percent in 2005, but rose to 25.44 percent in 2007.

Though Delhi's Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) is still better than the national average of 55, the 2007 figures are depressing, considering the last time Delhi saw such a high IMR data was in 2001, when the figure touched 24.5.

Reasons for high mortality rate
A number of factors are responsible for the rising mortality rate, the most important being illiteracy among parents, especially the mother.

Dr Sudha Prasad, senior doctor at Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan Hospital, stated, "The socio-economic profile of the mothers make it extremely hard for them to concentrate on one child, since most have a large brood of children. Many times, the parents can't even diagnose the symptoms properly, failing to bring the child in time for treatment.”

Another shocking revelation is that although Delhi is the country’s capital and a modern hi-tech city providing many incentives for child birth, nearly one fourth of infants in the city are born at home, a delivery system fraught with dangers.

An additional factor for the IMR in Delhi shooting up is the invasion of the city by people migrating from all over the country with no access to medical facilities. Unfortunately, the city does not have adequate measures for the existing population with the large hospitals in dire need of better heath care provisions.

Health minister Kiran Walia said, "We've been concentrating on healthcare for some time now, including introducing Anganwadi and healthcare workers. Special schemes like the Janani Suraksha Yojna and the Mamta schemes are also functional. But all efforts get neutralized in the face of the large influx of migrants into the city.”

Interesting anomaly
An interesting piece of information brought to light by the survey was that although the death rate has gone down from 6.11 per 1,000 in 2006 to 6.07 in 2007, the number of average deaths recorded per day has gone up from 271 in 2006 to 277 in 2007.

According to the data, 1,00974 deaths occurred in 2007 in Delhi, of which 15,442 were related to heart problems, 3920 to diabetes, 2597 to cancer and 2516 to TB. Road accidents were responsible for 1088 deaths and pneumonia for 897. Fire accidents were the cause of 824 fatalities, while 72,464 people died of other reasons.