Considering India’s highest mortality rate in 1997 the Indian government designed the Reproductive and Child Health (RCH) programme under the National Health Mission (NHM) to reduce infant, child, and maternal mortality. 

• The Reproductive and Child Health (RCH – I) Programme 1 was launched on 15th October 1997. 
•  The second phase of the RCH programme 2 (RCH – II) was launched on 1st April 2005. 
  It was launched with three main objectives 
  • To Reduce the overall fertility rate
  • Control Infant mortality rate 
  • Stop the maternal mortality rate 

• The National Population Policy (NPP) of the year 2000 included frameworks for reducing the infant mortality rate to below 30 per 1000 live births. Then in the year 2002, the eradication of polio by 2005 and reducing maternal mortality rate to 100 by 2010 were in the schedule of National Health Policy 2002. 
  In the tenth five-year plan (2002-2007) target was set to bring down the Infant Mortality rate (IMR) from 91 per thousand live births to 45, minimise the Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR) to 2 per thousand lives birth, and reduce the child mortality rate to 90 during the plan period. 
• And the 11th five-year plan (2007-2012) included schemes to reduce Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) to 28 per 1000 live births. It also addressed the issue of malnutrition among children of age groups 0–3.
• The twelfth Five-Year Plan (2012-17) covered the ongoing concern of underweight or undernourished children’s decline in nutritional level.  From the expected rate of  29% by 2015, and 27% by 2017 they launched targeted strategies for undernourished children under 3 years to reduce the percentage of undernourished children to 26% by 2015. And further, maintain the pace to arrive at the nutrition level of 23% by 2017.

Hence several initiatives have been taken by the Government including National Health Mission (NHM – 2005 -2017), Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Sustainable Development Goals (2016-2030). Millennium Development Goals (MDG) at the United Nations General Assembly was embraced by India in September 2000. And India made considerable progress in ending poverty and other deprivations. But India is still lagging on targets more rigorous and persistent efforts are required to meet the global target. 

• India further attached itself to the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) to reduce the Child mortality rate under 5 years. It was assented to by the United Nations world over leaders in 2015.
• The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have 17 global goals and are a part of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
  It was adopted by the United Nations in 2015 and child development and well-being is one of its goals. SDG Goal 3.2.1 is to end preventable deaths of neonatal and under-5 children by 2030. It has two targets:
  • Reduce newborn mortality to at least as low as 12 per 1000 live births in every country.
  • Reduce under-5 mortality to at least as low as 25 per 1000 live births in every country. 

As per SDG 195 nations aligned with it must set their targets and develop strategies to reduce child mortality.India needs to accelerate its progress substantially to achieve the target by 2030. More focused efforts and better strategies are needed.

Related Articles

• Data on Child Mortality Rate of India
• Consequences of Declining Fertility
• Why Counting Birth and Death Rates is Important?

Measures to Tackle the Child Mortality Rate

Here are some of the measures to tackle the child mortality rate:

• Emphasis has been to increase the number of infrastructures and distribution of facilities for neonatal care such as
  • More Special New Born Care Units, 
  • Newborn stabilisation Units (NBSUs)
  • Newborn Baby Care Corners (NBCC)
• Health care providers are trained regularly by organizing training programs for Doctors and Nurses for early detection and diagnosis of ailments in children under the National Rural Health Mission NRHM, Integrated Management of Neonatal and Child illness (IMNCI) or Navjat Shishu Suraksha Karyakram (NSSK). 
• Management of malnutrition among children is carried out, as it is one of the effective ways to reduce Child Mortality.
  • Large-scale establishment of a Nutritional rehabilitation centre (NRC) to keep under control any severe malnutrition conditions.
  • Promote and encourage breastfeeding to reduce neonatal mortality.
  • Home Based Newborn care (HBNC) through community health activists of ASHA or Accredited Social Health Activists. The number of newborns across the country visited by ASHA in 2014-2015 was 65 lakhs which increased to 98.25 lakh in 2015-16.
• Ministry of Health & Family Welfare adopted National Deworming Day (NDD) strategy in 2015 to fight against soil-transmitted helminths (STH) infections. It was the most prominent preschool and school-based deworming program in the world. It was having reached millions of children in three rounds. 
• To eradicate Child mortality under 5 years due to diarrhea, Intensified Diarrhoea Control Fortnight (IDCF) was implemented in 2014. Mass awareness and distribution for the use of ORS and Zinc during diarrhea were carried out. 
• To manage anaemia in children National Iron Plus Initiative (NIPI) was launched covering all age groups of children, with the main focus on children between 6 to 59 months of age. It involves distributing across the states/UTs Iron Folic Acid (IFA) supplementation in the form of syrup and tablets. 
• Immunisation programmes such as Universal Immunization Programme (UIP) have been implemented against many life-threatening diseases such as Tuberculosis, Diphtheria, Pertussis, Polio, Tetanus, Hepatitis B, and Measles. 
  • And with the objective of fully immunising children who are either unvaccinated or partially vaccinated “Mission Indradhanush” was launched.
  • Measles-Rubella Campaign was aggressively carried out in select States for children from 9 months to 15 years of age to eliminate Measles by 2020. 

India has made remarkable progress in its immunization programs to the extent it achieved the polio-free nation status in 2014 and eradicated maternal and neonatal tetanus in 2015.

Child Mortality: Though the current Child Mortality rate dropped by 59% since 1990, from 93 deaths per 1000 live births in 1990 to 38 in 2021, Child Mortality is still one of the major challenges to the World. According to the Latest data for 2020, the Child Mortality rate of Somalia is 114.6%, leading top in this list, followed by Nigeria (113.8%), and Chad (110%). Among the continents, the Child Mortality rate of Africa is the highest in the world at 74 deaths per 1000 live births, and it is 14 times higher than the total Child Mortality rate of Europe and North America.

In this article, you will read about child mortality, its causes, steps to handle it, and the child mortality rate in India.