India is failing to be a breastfeeding nation – potentially putting the lives of its newborns at risk. Just 41.5 percent of newborns in India are breastfed within an hour of being born. This is according to new data released by UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO), ahead of World Breastfeeding Awareness Week this year. On …
India is a leading producer of vaccines. It has enjoyed numerous vaccination campaign successes in the past. Despite this, around 60,000 Indian children under five die of vaccine-preventable diseases every year. India has demonstrated its capacity for successful vaccination campaigns in the past. On March 27, 2014, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared India polio-free. …
Gender discrimination and missing women The price of gender discrimination in India is the lives of almost 240,000 girls under five every year. Much attention is given in India to the issue of female foeticide. Sex-selective abortions are considered the major driver of India’s skewed sex ratio at birth (SRB) and its resultant 63 million …
A mother and her newborn in Madhya Pradesh. By DFID – UK Department for International Development (The importance of breastfeeding from birth) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons Every year, 2.6 million newborns in the world die within a month of their birth. Twenty-four percent of these deaths happen in India. India has a …
Why does India have the most newborn deaths in the world? Read More »
More births took place in India on New Year’s Day, more than any other country. UNICEF estimates 386,000 children were born on January 1, 2018 with more than 90 percent of them born in low and middle income countries (LMICs). India tops the list with 69,070 births, followed by China with 44,760 births and Nigeria …
Three children have died due to a “mystery fever” at the Lala Lajpat Rai Hospital in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh. The deaths may reinforce common criticisms of healthcare in India. As have many child deaths in recent weeks, they may generate comparisons to the circumstances of the Gorakhpur tragedy. The condition presented symptoms similar to …
A clinical trial in Odisha has revealed evidence that a cheap and simple treatment could drastically reduce child deaths due to sepsis. It is now well documented that babies born via caesarean section have an altered gut biome from an early age. This means the initial presence of symbiotic bacteria shows a difference between those …
The lives of almost 100,000 Indian children could be saved every year, with better breastfeeding practices. This is according to a new report by the Global Breastfeeding Collective, released to mark Breastfeeding Awareness Week (August 1-7). The report claims 830,000 deaths of children under five years could be averted globally each year if countries scaled …
Breastfeeding could save 100,000 child lives a year in India Read More »
Caesarean sections are on the rise in India, provoking concerns that doctors are performing the procedure excessively. The rate of caesarean sections in India has risen sixfold in the past twenty years and doubled in the last decade, reports The Wire. “In some states like Telangana, Tripura, West Bengal, Kerala, Goa, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil …
C-sections on the rise in India: Profiteering to blame? Read More »
“There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread”, Mahatma Gandhi said. Nearly seventy years after his death, his words are as apposite as they ever were. A national and regional tragedy The world is home to 795 million undernourished people. This equates roughly …
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