INFANT MORTALITY RATE (IMR) is the number of infant deaths ( within 1 year of child's birth) for every 1,000 live births. It is the indicator of health and standard of living in a country.
Though our IMR is decreasing for the past 2 decades, we still have to work on it at a greater pace as India has the highest number of infant deaths which is about 8,00,000, or maybe greater, despite their low IMR.
Our IMR was 51 in 2007 it means 1 child dies in every 20 live births. It was very high at that time, but after the government's continuous effort, we down our IMR from 51 to 28.03 as per the report of 2019. The IMR report is published by World Bank every three years.
There are few reasons why India is facing this problem:
1. Poor infrastructure in Government hospitals:
India's per capita income is meager, and most of our population resides in rural areas. So every middle-class man prefers to go to Government hospitals as they are cost-effective.
But most of the Government hospitals do not have proper infrastructure like patients' beds, incubators, ventilators, oxygen lines, etc. If present, they are either damaged or fully occupied . No mechanism could look after these instruments and repair them and thus led to many deaths.
2. Poor infrastructure in rural areas
In India, about 22% of the total babies are delivered in homes, not in hospitals. As 65 -69% of our population resides in rural areas, there is no proper transport, roads, etc., to reach hospitals. Also, sometimes, lack of infrastructure leads to the death of either child, mother, or both.
Due to adverse conditions, they are not benefitted by Asha's as Asha's could not reach there due to no means of transportation.
3. Lack of education
In India, many children face malnutrition because of their poor food intake during their births or due to poor antenatal and postnatal health.
Many people do not know about vaccination and sanitation as many severe diseases can infect children and lead them to death.
4. Deaths caused by preventable diseases:
Most deaths are caused by diseases like diarrhea, pneumonia, sepsis, etc. These diseases are preventable, but poor health infrastructure and improper facilities led to deaths.
5. Shortage of medical staff and delay in referring patients
Most of our hospitals are facing these problems. Even during the covid times, many of our hospitals came across this problem. According to surveys, there is a minimum of 75% fewer specialists in our country and even 95% in some places.
Most people are treated in the government's primary health care sector. Due to the lack of proper instruments in primary Healthcare hospitals, they refer them to other hospitals. but due to no enough facilities, they die in between or after reaching hospitals
There are many steps taken by the government, but they are still not working efficiently. Our government should implement some new policies through which we can decrease our IMR
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