Gul Panag, will be seen in Delhi’s Okhla industrial slum on Tuesday, talking to women in the slum cluster who have lost their newborns due to easily preventable causes.
Gul Panag will be speaking to about 100 mothers and women in the slum about Save the Children’s global report “Ending New Born Deaths- Ensuring every baby survives” and the issue of newborn mortality, and the importance of a skilled frontline health worker, and what needs to be done to further improve child survival in the state.
As Gul Panag spoke about the report and statistics with all the mothers and women in Oklha, she mentioned that,
While there has been significant progress on ensuring child survival in India, the fact that nearly 40 per cent of neo-natal deaths occur on the 1st day of birth in India is stalling progress on achieving MDG 4. India accounts for an astounding 29 per cent of the global deaths of newborns on their very first day of birth. About half the first-day deaths around the world could be prevented if every mother and baby had access to free and quality health care and skilled birth attendants. Overall,It is disheartening to see that so many mothers are still losing their children due to easily preventable causes. Even though we have made tremendous progress in reducing child mortality, Delhi has the highest number of infant deaths amongst the biggest metropolitan cities. And a majority of these is that of newborns. I urge government and other stakeholders to double their efforts in reducing these needless deaths.
The report will be launched globally in over 30 countries. In India, the report will be launched in 7 Indian states on the same day. According to the report, even though India has made a lot of progress by reducing under-five mortality to half (from 114 in 1990 to 52 per 1000 live births in 2012), India still has persistently high rates of new born mortality and accounts for 26.6% of all newborn deaths globally.
While the child mortality rate has come down across all population groups, it is three times higher among the poorest households compared with the richest ones.
In respect to Delhi, where 50 percent of its children live in slums and 14.71 of its population is below poverty line- the focus of NHM on maternal and child health, and especially new born by providing adequate number of skilled frontline health workers, building community mechanisms for monitoring and a stronger health system will enable the state to lead on tackling new born child survival.
